The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy Jewish and Christian Physicians in Search of Truth

The Bible and Natural Philosophy in
Renaissance Italy
The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy explores the reciprocal
relationship between biblical interpretation and natural philosophy in sixteenth-
century Italy. The book augments our knowledge of the manifold applications
of medical expertise in the Renaissance and of the multiple ways in which the
Bible was read by educated people who lacked theological training. Andrew D.
Berns demonstrates that many physicians in sixteenth-century Italy, Jewish and
Christian alike, took a keen interest in the Bible and postbiblical religious litera-
ture. Berns identifies the intellectual tools that Renaissance doctors and natural
philosophers brought to bear on their analysis of the Bible and assesses how
their education and professional experience helped them acquire, develop, and
use those tools. The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy argues
that the changing nature of medical culture in the Renaissance inspired physi-
cians to approach the Bible not only as a divine work but also as a historical
and scientific text.
Andrew D. Berns is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South

Carolina.
The Bible and
Natural Philosophy in
Renaissance Italy
Jewish and Christian
Physicians in Search of Truth
Andrew D. Berns
University of South Carolina
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

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© Andrew D. Berns 2015
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Berns, Andrew D., 1980–
The Bible and natural philosophy in Renaissance Italy : Jewish and Christian
physicians in search of truth / Andrew D. Berns, University of South Carolina.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-107-06554-3 (hardback)
1. Bible – Hermeneutics. 2. Bible – Criticism, interpretation, etc. – Italy – History – 16th
century. 3. Bible – Criticism, interpretation, etc. – Italy – History – 17th century. 4. Bible
and science. 5. Medicine – Italy – History. 6. Physics – Italy – History. I. Title.
bs 476. b 475 2015
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IS B N 978-1-107-06554-3 Hardback
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Contents
Acknowledgments page vii
A Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Names ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1 “This Is What King David Meant”: Amatus Lusitanus and

Ulisse Aldrovandi on the Natural Science of Scripture 37
2 Pliny, Papyrus, and the Bible 71
3 “The Grandeur of the Science of God”: David de’ Pomi

and the Stones of the High Priest’s Breastplate 109
4 Jewish-Christian Relations in Sixteenth-Century Italy:

Abraham Portaleone’s Correspondence with His Gentile
Colleagues 153
5 “I Seek the Truth from Whomever Pronounces It”:

Abraham Portaleone and Ancient Israelite Incense 194
Conclusion 230
Appendix I. The Ancient Israelite Incense Mixture 241
Appendix II. Ulisse Aldrovandi and Hebrew 243
v
vi Contents
Appendix III. The Index to Portaleone’s Responsorum et

consultationum medicinalium liber (1607) 245
Bibliography 261
Index 293
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following individuals: Nadja Aksamija, Maria

Cristina Bacchi, Ann Blair, Robert Bonfil, Francesca Bregoli, Martin
Burke, Stephen Burnett, Giancarlo Casale, Roger Chartier, Daniel
Cheeley, D’Maris Coffman, Anna Cremaldi, Nicholas de Lange, Theodor
Dunkelgrün, Yaacob Dweck, Lynne Farrington, Antonio Feros, Emanuela
Ferretti, Paula Findlen, Fabio Finotti, Federica Francesconi, Matthew
Gaetano, Anthony Grafton, Allen Grieco, Alessandro Guetta, Josef
Gulka, Joseph Hacker, Elliott Horowitz, Moshe Idel, Philippa Jackson,
Matt Karp, Arthur Kiron, Judith Leifer, Fabrizio Lelli, Valentina Lepri,
Evan MacCarthy, Ian Maclean, Scott Mandelbrote, Bill Marotti, David
Myers, Gianfranco Miletto, Mauro Minardi, Benjamin Nathans, Bruce
Nielson, Gabriel Piterberg, John Pollack, Maria Portuondo, Eve Troutt
Powell, Todd Presner, Renee Raphael, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Laura
Refe, Elchanan Reiner, Michael Rocke, David Sacks, Marco Sgarbi,
Adam Shear, Pete Stacey, Jonathan Steinberg, Nicholas Terpstra, Piet van
Boxel, Giuseppe Veltri, and Beth Wenger.
Thanks are due also to Anna, Giorgio, and Giovanna Bacchelli; Daren
Belsby; David Berns; Joan Berns; Sarah Berns; Christopher Boicos;
Gregory Borenstein; Deborah Broadnax; Mitchell Charap; Carol
Feinberg Cohen; Emanuele Colorni; Antonella Faeda; Jill Feldstein;
Flora Filannino; Jeremy Galen; Karen Gilmore; Kieran Hanrahan; Mark
Heyman; Jack Higgins; Jim Hinz; Kate Joyce; Nelson Lande; Charles
Mayara; Clayton Northouse; Juliana Ochs; Ruth Pearson; Joan Plonski;
Andy Rachlin; Jonathan Rosenblatt; Rhonda and Richard Soricelli;
Andrew Viterbi; Todd Vladyka; Oriana Walker; Christine Walsh; and
Dylan Weller.
vii
viii Acknowledgments
I am grateful to these institutions for their support: History Department,

University of South Carolina; Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University
Center for Italian Renaissance Studies; History Department, Center for
Jewish Studies, and Viterbi Family Program in Mediterranean Jewish
Studies, UCLA; History Department, Center for Italian Studies, Jewish
Studies Program, and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University
of Pennsylvania; Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Oxford;
the Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science; the Foundation
for Jewish Culture; Istituto ellenico, Venice; and the Gladys Krieble
Delmas Foundation, Venice.
I would like to acknowledge the following libraries and archives:
Bibliothèque nationale, Paris; Biblioteca universitaria, Bologna;
Biblioteca comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna; Archivio isolani,
Bologna; Archivio di Stato, Mantua; Biblioteca Palatina, Parma;
Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan; Biblioteca nazionale centrale, Florence;
Biblioteca marciana, Venice; Archivio di Stato, Venice; Jewish National
and University Library, Jerusalem; British Library, London; Cambridge
University Library, Cambridge; Peterhouse, Cambridge; Bodleian
Library, Oxford; Charles E. Young Library, UCLA; National Library
of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland; Columbia University Library, New
York; Jewish Theological Seminar, New York; Fales Library, New York
University; Houghton Library, Harvard University; Countway Medical
Library, Harvard University; Firestone Library, Princeton University;
College of Physicians of Philadelphia; Libraries of the University of
Pennsylvania; Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia.
At Cambridge University Press I would like to thank Brian MacDonald,
two anonymous readers, and my editors Beatrice Rehl, Asya Graf, and
Isabella Vitti.
My deepest professional debts are to Franco Bacchelli, Sol Cohen, Ann
Moyer, David Ruderman, Nancy Siraisi, and Joanna Weinberg. I alone
bear responsibility for any errors in this book.
Most of all, Mara Zepeda.
A Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Names
All translations, unless otherwise specified, are my own. Translations

of biblical verses are generally those of the Jewish Publication Society.
When transcribing Hebrew texts, I have not corrected all grammatical
or printing errors. When transliterating Hebrew, I have followed the
guidelines laid out in Encyclopedia Judaica (Second Edition, 2007). I
have preferred vernacular as opposed to Latinate names for the Italian
protagonists in this work. Thus David de’ Pomi rather than David de
Pomis; Ulisse Aldrovandi rather than Ulyssis Aldrovandus; Abraham
Portaleone rather than Abraham Portaleonis. One exception: when a
Northern European such as Melchior Wieland took on both Italian and
Latin names, I have used the Latin appellation Melchior Guilandinus in
deference to scholarly precedent.
ix
Abbreviations
BT Babylonian Talmud
BUB Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna
DBI Dizionario biografico degli italiani
EJ Encyclopedia Judaica (Second Edition, 2007)
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
PL J. P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus series latina
(Paris: Garnier, 1844–65)
REJ Revue des Études Juives
SG Shiltei HaGibborim
xi
Introduction
In the dedicatory letter to Pope Leo X that opened his 1521 Polyglot
Psalter, Sante Pagnini compared unreliable translations of ancient Greek
natural philosophy to unreliable translations of the Bible.1 Works of
natural philosophy, Pagnini stated, were marred by “false interpreters”
who were also “blind leaders of the blind” – an expression with clear
scriptural allusion.2 For Pagnini, mistranslations of scientific texts had
deleterious effects: they resulted in inaccurate medical prescriptions that
poisoned the sick. The damage done from faulty renderings of “sacred
literature,” however, was worse, since those poor translations lent “evil
confirmation to the errors of heretics” and “will be the cause of laughter
and contempt.”3
1
Sante Pagnini, Psalterium nuper translatum ex hebraeo, chaldaeo, et graeco (Rome: n.pr.,
1521). On this letter, see Anna Morisi Guerra, “Incontri ebraico-cristiani. Il Salterio poli-
glotto di Santi Pagnini,” in her Itinerari ebraico-cristiani: società, cultura, mito (Fasano:
Schena, 1987), 9–37, esp. 24–27; Morisi Guerra, “Santi Pagnini traducteur de la Bible,” in I.
Backus and F. Higman, eds., Théorie et pratique de l’exégèse (Geneva: Droz, 1990), 191–98,
esp. 196; Paul Grendler, “Italian Biblical Humanism and the Papacy,” in Erika Rummel, ed.,
Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 227–76,
242–43. On Pagnini, see T. M. Centi, “L’attività letteraria di Santi Pagnini (1470–1536) nel
campo delle scienze bibliche,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 15 (1945): 5–51.
2
Pagnini, Psalterium, sig. *2r: “utinam vero non etiam falsi interpretes fuerint ac caeci
caecorum duces, dum in aequivocis dictionibus alienam a re ipsa significationem accipientes,
veram relinquunt et de rebus gravissimis contraria quam oporteat ratione decernunt.” Cf.
Matthew 15:14.
3
Pagnini, Psalterium, sig. *2r–v: “mitto autem quod periculosos humanae vitae errores admi-
serint, qui nobis graecos medicae facultatis autores male verterunt, dum pro salubri haerba
vel pharmaco noxium virus nobis supposuerunt. . . . Quod autem ad sacrarum literarum
pertinet studia, quis non cognoscat tanto periculosius in iis peccatum admitti, quanto subli-
miora sunt, quae tractanda suscipiuntur, immortalia scilicet, ac divina? Quae, si quo casu
1
2 The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy
Pagnini’s comparison of scientific and scriptural translation was not

merely rhetorical; other scholars of his generation perceived an affil-
iation between natural philosophy and the study of scripture. Three
years before Pagnini published his letter to Leo X, Gianfrancesco Pico
della Mirandola wrote to Pagnini in June 1518 to tell him that “aspir-
ing theologians learn natural philosophy.” They believe, Pico said, that
“many areas of inquiry should be investigated,” some of which produce
“great anxiety.” Nevertheless, according to Pico, these matters “per-
plexed them not in the least,” and they solved them “with relatively lit-
tle effort.”4 In the century following Pico’s observation, a conspicuous
number of physicians and naturalists analyzed the Bible from a natural
philosophical perspective. They also applied their religious erudition in
the service of their scientific pursuits. Many of them lived in central and
especially northern Italy. The majority worked in Venice, Bologna, or
the Duchy of Mantua. Jews and Christians were equally involved in
this endeavor and are equally represented in this book. Whatever their
religious faith, they are, for the most part, barely known to modern
historians. This project draws from a deep well of writings by Amatus
Lusitanus, Melchior Guilandinus, Andrea Bacci, Abraham Yagel,
Alessandro Magno, and Giovanni Battista Cavallara. The three pri-
mary figures upon whose work it especially relies are only slightly more
familiar to modern historians: Ulisse Aldrovandi, David de’ Pomi, and
Abraham Portaleone. For these sixteenth-century scholars, natural phi-
losophy helped elucidate the Bible. Medical education and natural phi-
losophy provided their recipients and practitioners with the intellectual
tools they used to develop a unique approach to the Bible.5 Scripture, in
male tradita accipiantur, haereticis sinistram erroris occasionem, infidelibus autem risum
nostri atque contemptum praebitura sunt.”
4
Santi Pagnini, Biblia: habes in hoc libro prudens lector utriusque instrumenti novam transla-
tionem æditum (Lyon: Antonius du Ry, 1528), “Ioannis Franciscus Picus Mirandulae Dominus
Sancti Pagnino Lucensi Praedicatorii ordinis s.p.d.,” sig.*div–diir, sig.*div: “In philosophia vero
naturali et in disputatrici, quae nunc plurimum in usu theologia [sic: theologiae] candidati
praeter illa et condiscent et admonebuntur tractari multas quaestiones apud se (et anxias qui-
dem plurimum), quas eruditissimi viri vix opere longi subsellii dissolvant; quae quidem quam
faciles, quam nullo nexu perplexae sint tua ipsa interpretatione manifestum fiet.” The letter is
dated (Sig. *diir) Calen. Iunii. A partu virginis, MDXVIII, or 1 June 1518. On Gianfrancesco
Pico della Mirandola, see Charles B. Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–
1533) and His Critique of Aristotle (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967).
5
On the close connections between medicine and natural philosophy in Italy at this time,
see Giuseppe Olmi, Inventario del mondo: catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere
Introduction 3
turn, helped settle disputes in learned natural philosophy and improve

the efficacy of p
ractical medicine.6
The Natural Philosophy of the Biblical World explores the reciprocal
relationship between biblical interpretation and natural philosophy in
sixteenth-century Italy. It investigates people who studied the Bible and
pursued natural philosophy with such equal and related ardor that they
scarcely perceived a difference between the two. The project describes
the fields of study they cultivated, tells the story of how they changed
them, and examines the social, educational, and intellectual structures
that promoted this extraordinary symbiosis between two ostensibly
alien branches of knowledge.
Though the Bible was studied in tandem with natural philosophy
in other parts of Europe at this time, Italy presents a unique histor-
ical case.7 In contradistinction to most biblical commentary in early
modern Europe, which was colored by confessional polemic, Italian
physicians’ explorations of the Bible were less dogmatic. Generally,
they avoided ideological skirmishes. Natural philosophers, like con-
temporary theologians, pursued truth.8 But the truth they sought was
of a different kind: they interrogated the precise meaning of natural
nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), 256, 300; Anthony Grafton and
Nancy Siraisi, eds., Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 11; Siraisi, “Anatomizing the Past: Physicians and
History in Renaissance Culture,” Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 1–30; Siraisi, “History,
Antiquarianism, and Medicine: The Case of Girolamo Mercuriale,” Journal of the History
of Ideas 64 (2003): 231–51; Brian Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in
Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
6
For mostly Northern European examples of this last point, see Ann Blair, “Mosaic Physics
and the Search for a Pious Natural Philosophy in the Late Renaissance,” Isis 91 (2000):
32–58.
7
For England, see Kevin Killeen, Biblical Scholarship, Science and Politics in Early Modern
England: Thomas Browne and the Thorny Place of Knowledge (Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2009); for Spain, see María M. Portuondo, “The Study of Nature, Philosophy, and the Royal
Library of San Lorenzo of the Escorial,” Renaissance Quarterly 63:4 (2010): 1106–50.
8
Claims of arriving at the “truth” or “true meaning” of the biblical texts are commonplace
in Italian writings of the sixteenth century. See Abraham Portaleone, SG, 86r–v; David de’
Pomi, Tsemah￵ David (Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1587), 232; and Andrea Bacci, L’Alicorno
(Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1573) sig. 2Av, all use this language. See also Azariah de’
Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, trans. and ed. Joanna Weinberg (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2001), 251, 406, and Weinberg, “The Beautiful Soul: Azariah de’ Rossi’s Search for
Truth,” in David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri, eds., Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish
Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004),
109–26.
terminology in the Bible. The quest to find the “true meaning” of

biblical language led Italian physicians to compare the Bible’s state-
ments about nature to those in pagan texts. They read the Bible in
order to solve natural philosophical problems, not theological ones.
Historians of early modern history who claim that before the
eighteenth century scripture was studied because it revealed “the means
to salvation” and that it was only in the Enlightenment that the Bible
was to “move beyond theology” miss earlier adumbrations of those
eighteenth-century developments.9 Still, Aldrovandi, Amatus, and their
fellow Renaissance naturalists who studied the Bible were more than
mere avatars of later periods; they were men of their own time and
deserve to be understood as such.
Medical Culture in Late Renaissance Italy

Features unique to learned medicine in mid-sixteenth-century Italy facil-
itated a close scrutiny of passages in the Bible having to do with the
natural world. The first was medical education. The education that a
young man received at an Italian university in the middle of the six-
teenth century retained many traditional features. At the same time it
was undergoing significant changes.10 To begin with, the authority of
Galen and Hippocrates was no longer unquestioned.11 Galenism, which
had long dominated the medical curriculum, was becoming increas-
ingly expansive and flexible: by the middle of the sixteenth century doc-
tors added new content to the corpus of Galen’s writings.12 They also
9
Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005), xiii, 28.
10
Paul Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2002), 201ff.
11
I do not mean to conflate these two medical writers or the corpora they left behind.
Ian Maclean has introduced a helpful distinction between the two. Whereas students of
Hippocratic writings stood for reverence of the past, much as their humanist colleagues
did, devotees of Galen believed that knowledge was cumulative. See Ian Maclean, Logic,
Signs, and the Order of Nature in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 209. It is perhaps no accident that Abraham Portaleone was critical of the
Hippocratic corpus in his medical consilia. See herein, Chapter 4.
12
Between 1490 and 1598, 660 editions of Galen were published. Eighteen of them were
Opera omnia. See August Buck, “Die Medizin im Verständnis des Renaissancehumanismus,”
in Rudolf Schmitz and Gundolf Keil, eds., Humanismus und Medizin (Weinheim: Acta
Humaniora, 1984), 181–98, 187.
Introduction 5
criticized him.13 Medicine’s flexible stance toward the authority of tradi-

tion, which Ian Maclean has contrasted to the legal profession’s tendency
to remain faithful to that authority,14 colored the way Jewish physicians
such as David de’ Pomi, Abraham Portaleone, and others approached
their received Jewish tradition. It similarly altered how Christians such
as Ulisse Aldrovandi, Andrea Bacci, and Melchior Guilandinus related
to their Christian one.
Another important midcentury shift was that clinical training became
more popular and ascended to an unprecedented position in university
curricula. At some centers of learning, such as Padua, clinical training –
which required bedside visits, pulse measurement, urine sampling, and
performance of dissections and autopsies – was so popular that students
would matriculate there to receive it after completing the theoretical
portion of their studies elsewhere.15 Anatomy in particular, famously
championed by Andreas Vesalius, became after 1525 the defining feature
of hands-on, empirical medicine.16 This emphasis on clinical practice
encouraged firsthand observation and attentiveness to natural particu-
lars. When David de’ Pomi scrutinized biblical gemstones and Abraham
Portaleone studied biblical incense, they applied lessons they had learned
as medical students at, respectively, the Universities of Perugia and Pavia
to their study of the Bible.17 One additional aspect of medical education
had a strong influence on biblical studies in the late sixteenth century:
the emphasis on Greek philology.
In the fifteenth century, scholars learned Greek with private tutors
or in small circles.18 By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Aldus
13
Nancy Siraisi, “Giovanni Argenterio and Sixteenth-Century Medical Innovation: Between
Princely Patronage and Academic Controversy,” Osiris 6 (1992): 161–80, 178–9. Perhaps
the best example of criticism of Galen is Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (Basel:
Johannes Oporinus, 1543). Vesalius criticized some aspects of Galen’s work while remaining
a committed Galenist.
14
Maclean, Logic, Signs, and the Order of Nature, 231.
15
Jerome J. Bylebyl, “The School of Padua: Humanistic Medicine in the Sixteenth Century,” in
Charles Webster, ed., Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979), 335–70, 351.
16
Vivian Nutton, “‘Prisci dissectionum professores’: Greek Texts and Renaissance Anatomists,”
in A. C. Dionisotti, Anthony Graton, and Jill Kraye, eds., The Uses of Greek and Latin:
Historical Essays (London: Warburg Institute, 1988), 111–26, 115.
17
For more on Pavia, especially its Greek curriculum, see herein Chapter 3.
18
N. G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 4.
Manutius had established the Neakademia, a “new academy” devoted to

the cultivation of Greek language and literature. Indeed, the members of
that group even made a pact not to speak to each other in any language
other than classical Greek, and infractions were penalized with a stiff
fine. In practice, few members of Aldus’s circle truly spoke Greek.19 The
fact that the members of the Neakademia advertised their devotion to
that ancient tongue explains their passion more than their skill.20 Apart
from these ephemeral gatherings and ad hoc arrangements dedicated
to Greek language and culture, universities played an important role
in Greek instruction. In sixteenth-century Europe, medical faculties in
Italian universities taught more Greek to a greater number of pupils
than any other institution, with the possible exception of the Collège de
France.
The sixteenth-century revival of interest in ancient Greek medical
texts shaped the study and practice of Renaissance medicine.21 Even as
most medical learning continued to be acquired and disseminated in
Latin, sixteenth-century physicians routinely mined ancient Greek texts
for nuggets of information about famed cures and rare plants.22 To the
mind of Andrea Mattioli, a famous sixteenth-century naturalist, elite
physicians and elite scholars of Greek were indistinguishable from one
another.23 Ulisse Aldrovandi himself invoked an oft-repeated trope when
he mused that improved knowledge of Greek was the major reason why
medicine had progressed so far in his century.24
19
Ibid., 133.
20
Martin Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance
Venice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 196–99; Martin Davies, Aldus
Manutius: Printer and Publisher of Renaissance Venice (London: British Library, 1995).
21
Bylebyl, “The School of Padua,” 340. See also Nancy Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy:
The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1987), 65–6, 96–7, and bibliography there.
22
For a detailed periodization of Greek studies in sixteenth-century medicine, see Vivian
Nutton, “Greek Science in the Sixteenth-Century Renaissance,” in J. V. Field and Frank A.
J. L. James, eds., Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen, and Natural
Philosophers in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 15–28
and Nutton, “John Caius and the Eton Galen: Medical Philology in the Renaissance,”
Medezinhistorisches Journal 20 (1985): 227–52. On the continued dominance of Latin, par-
ticularly until the middle of the sixteenth century, see Nutton, “Hellenism Postponed: Some
Aspects of Renaissance Medicine, 1490–1530,” Sudhoffs Archiv 81:2 (1997): 158–70.
23
See Pietro Mattioli’s letter “agli studiosi lettori,” in his I discorsi di M. Pietro Andrea
Matthioli (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1568), sig **5v.
24
Ulisse Aldrovandi, Discorso naturale, BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 91, 530r.
Introduction 7
The emphasis on Greek in Renaissance medical education inspired

its recipients to deploy their philological skills in different ways. They
edited, translated, and commented on classical Greek writers such as
Galen, Aristotle, Dioscorides, and Theophrastus. They also sought out
Bible translations in Greek that they deemed potentially authoritative, or
which, at the very least, could illuminate obscure scriptural passages.25
Early modern Italian physicians used their knowledge of Greek to inves-
tigate alternatives to the Latin text of the Vulgate and the Hebrew text
of the Bible.
In sixteenth-century Italian universities conversations about the
Bible took place informally. Modern scholars insist that theological
studies were marginalized at that time and place.26 But that argument
is based on research that attends to official university records and
church pronouncements. The day-to-day realities of life at a univer-
sity like Bologna or Padua may have been quite different. In midcen-
tury Bologna, for example, Gabriele Paleotti, the future bishop of that
city, organized a group of university students united by their interest
in spiritual issues.27 More to the point, at Padua the theology pro-
fessor Girolamo Vielmi mentioned in his lectures on Genesis a series
of “informal conversations” with the botanist Melchior Guilandinus,
whom Vielmi credits with helping him understand a difficult verse in
that book.28 Naturalists and theologians helped each other study the
Bible. Even if theological study had a limited role in sixteenth-century
Italian universities, the scrutiny of sacred texts, most notably the Bible,
did not.29
The kinds of conversations that Vielmi and Guilandinus were having
at Padua intimate a second feature of sixteenth-century medical culture
that stimulated a renewed interest in the Bible: the social dynamics of
25
On interest in Greek Bible texts in the context of diminishing faith in the Vulgate’s accuracy,
see Hildebrand Höpfl, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sixto-Klementinischen Vulgata (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1913), 1–43.
26
Charles B. Schmitt, “Philosophy and Science in Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities,” in
André Chastel et al., eds., The Renaissance: Essays in Interpretation (London: Methuen,
1982), 297–336, 314.
27
Paolo Prodi, Il Cardinale Gabriele Paleotti, 2 vols. (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura,
1959–67), 2:217.
28
Girolamo Vielmi, De sex diebus conditi orbis liber (Venice: Giunta, 1575), 335. See herein
Chapter 2.
29
See also Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, chap. 10.
the medical profession. In the sixteenth century, Italian universities such

as Bologna and Padua replaced French and Spanish universities such as
Paris, Montpellier, and Salamanca as those that attracted Europe’s best
and most ambitious students. An international and polyglot group of
young men flocked to Italian medical faculties. The University of Padua
presented a unique environment in which Jewish students from dif-
ferent ethnic backgrounds forged lifelong friendships.30 At Padua and
other Italian universities, students came into contact with members of
different religious communities, too.31 Relationships manifestly inter-
faith and not merely intraconfessional flourished. Jews and Catholics
alike met students whose unfamiliar perspectives on classical and sacred
texts complemented and challenged their own. Dialogues that began
at university continued to develop in later years through the interna-
tional network that Ian Maclean has called the Medical Republic of
Letters.32 Occasionally, conversations between Jews and Christians
morphed into epistolary exchanges later in life. For example, Girolamo
Mercuriale wrote several letters to Moses Alatino, a Jewish physician
from Spoleto, that were published in Mercuriale’s printed medical
responses and consultations.33 The letters indicate not only Mercuriale’s
respect for Alatino’s “learning and skill in practicing medicine” but also
30
David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 100–17; Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A
New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 127–28.
31
For examples beyond Padua, see I. Zoller, “I medici ebrei laureati a Siena negli anni 1543–
1694,” Rivista Israelitica 10 (1913): 60–70, 100–10; and A. Franceschini, “Privilegi dottorali
concessi ad Ebrei a Ferrara nel secolo XVI,” in Atti e memorie della Deputazione ferrarese
di storia patria, ser. 3, 19 (1975): 173–4. In general, see Vittore Colorni, “Sull’ammissibilità
degli ebrei alla laurea anteriormente al secolo XIX,” in Colorni, Judaica minora: saggi sulla
storia dell’ebraisimo italiano dall’antichità all’età moderna (Milan: Giuffrè, 1983), 473–89.
Originally published in Rassegna mensile di Israel 16 (1950): 202–16.
32
Ian Maclean, “The Medical Republic of Letters before the Thirty Years War,” Intellectual
History Review 18:1 (2008): 15–30.
33
Hieronymi Mercurialis Foroliviensis responsorum, et consultationum medicinalium tomus
primus (Venice: apud Iolitos, 1587), consultatio 16, p. 43: “De uteri tumore, urinae acri-
monia, aluique suppressione, Pro nobili iuvene Hebraea, ad Moysem Alatinum Medicum
Hebraeum.” See also Hieronymi Mercurialis Foroliviensis responsorum, et consultationum
medicinalium tomus tertius (Venice: apud Franciscum de Franciscis Senensem, 1597), “De
vena in pleuritide secanda quaenam ea sit, Moysi Alatino medico,” 66v–67v. The responses
and consultations are not numbered in this volume. It is not known where Alatino stu-
died medicine. We do know, however, that Alatino visited the University of Padua in 1572,
where Mercuriale was teaching at the time. See Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1977 [1959]), 84.
Introduction 9
the affection between the two men.34 Another of Mercuriale’s corre-

spondents was Abraham Portaleone, to whom he wrote, expressing high
regard for the Mantuan physician’s work and signing off as his “faithful
friend.”35 Exchanges between Jews and Christians eventually motivated
innovative research in those students’ mature writings. Portaleone wrote
about the Bible and the Talmud when he corresponded with non-Jewish
physicians such as Alessandro Magno and Giovanni Battista Cavallara,
whom he may have known from university.
There were several other ways Portaleone may have met and devel-
oped relationships with non-Jewish colleagues: colleges of physicians
and courts. Those two social, professional, and political settings changed
significantly in the sixteenth century, and their occasional admission of
Jews tells us much not only about the careers of physicians like David
de’ Pomi and Abraham Portaleone but also about more general contacts
between Jews and Christians in late Renaissance Italy. Mantua is a unique
case. While certain academies in that city, such as the Accademia degli
Invaghiti, did not admit Jews, the Gonzaga family welcomed them into
its court as physicians and entertainers.36 The city’s College of Physicians
34
Mercuriale, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium tomus primus, 43: “et haec sunt,
quae in proposito casu ad te scribenda putavi. Reliquum est, ut me ames ac tuam doctrinam
et in medendo peritiam a me plurimum aestimari putes. Bene vale. Patavii.” The letter is
undated. The phrase “ut me ames” is likely an allusion to Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares
13:47: “tu fac, quod facis, ut me ames, teque amari a me scias.”
35
primus (Venice: apud Iolitos, 1587), Consultatio 8, p. 25, “De mensibus inordinatis atque
imminutis ac de sterilitate ad Abrahamum e Portalionis Medicum Hebraeum.” “De vivendi
ratione, quam in cunctis medicamentis scis esse necessariam, nihil dico, quod mihi persua-
deam te nihil quod ad ipsam pertineat esse ullo tempore omissurum. Bene vale, tibique de
Mercuriali ea omnia pollicearis, quae a fideli amico expectari possunt” (p. 26). Nancy Siraisi
notes this letter in her Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the
Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 25.
36
The dramatist Leone de’ Sommi was refused membership in the Accademia degli Invaghiti;
he was appointed secretary instead. See David Kaufmann, “Leone de’ Sommi Portaleone
(1527–92): Dramatist and Founder of a Synagogue at Mantua,” JQR 1 (1898): 445–61.
On the Gonzaga family and the Jews, see Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the
Duchy of Mantua (Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1977); Simonsohn, “The Theater Troupe of
the Mantuan Jews” (Hebrew), Paragod (1963): 13–17; Don Harrán, “Jewish Dramatists
and Musicians in the Renaissance: Separate Activities, Common Aspirations,” in Siegried
Gmeinwieser et al., eds., Musicologia Humana: Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula
Kirkendale (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1994), 291–304; Daniel Jütte, “Abramo Colorni,
jüdischer Hofalchemist Herzog Friedrichs I., und die hebräische Handelskompanie des
Maggino Gabrielli in Würtemberg am Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Aschkenaz. Zeitschrift
für Geschichte und Kultur der Juden 15 (2005): 435–98.
had Jewish members.37 Mantua’s court and College of Physicians enabled

interconfessional relationships between Catholics and Jews.
The third feature of late Renaissance medical culture that influenced
the study of sacred literature was a set of paraprofessional interests
that many physicians shared. Of these, two deserve further consider-
ation: collecting and the embrace of alternative sources of knowledge,
chiefly empirical. Many early developers of cabinets of curiosity and,
later, museums were either pharmacists or physicians.38 From Francesco
Calzolari to Ferrante Imperato, sixteenth-century medical profession-
als wanted more than to know nature; they wanted to acquire it.39 The
desire to acquire nature led many Renaissance physicians to seek out
samples of it. In Mantua, for example, the court physician Marcello
Donati owned and operated a museum of curiosities.40 Some of the
37
Archivio di stato di Mantova, Libro dei Decreti Nr. 46, pp. 24–37. These documents are
published in G. Carra and A. Zanca, “Gli statuti del collegio dei medici di Mantova del
1559,” in Atti e memorie dell’accademia virgiliana di Mantova, Classe di scienze fisiche
e techniche 2 (1977). On Jews, see ¶ 21, “De Judeo Phisico,” pp. 29–30 and ¶ 28, “De
Chirurgo Judeo,” 34–35. Italian translations of the Latin text are available in Carra and
Zanca, “Gli statuti,” 70–1 and 77–8. See also Gianfranco Miletto, Glauben und Wissen im
Zeitalter der Reformation: Der salomonische Tempel bei Abraham Ben David Portaleone
(1542–1612) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 2–3. Carra and Zanca also published Mantua’s
“Catalogo o ruolo o matricola del Collegio dei medici (1539–1783),” Part V of which is tit-
led “Magistri Medici Hebrei Admissi per Collegium ad Medendum in Dominio.” See Carra
and Zanca, “Gli statuti,” 114–15. From the list’s beginning in 1539 until the sack of Mantua
in 1630, six Jewish physicians appear. See also Gianfranco Miletto, “Die Zulassung der
jüdischen Ärzte in Italien während der Gegenreform: der Fall Portaleone,” Biblische Notizen
116 (2003): 48–55. On court physicians more generally, see the contributions of Richard
Palmer and Hugh Trevor Roper to Vivian Nutton, ed., Medicine at the Courts of Europe,
1500–1837 (London: Routledge, 1990).
38
Paula Findlen, “The Formation of a Scientific Community: Natural History in Sixteenth-
Century Italy,” in Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, eds., Natural Particulars: Nature and
the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 369–400; Findlen,
“The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy,” Journal of the History of
Collections 1 (1989): 59–78; Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific
Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
39
Findlen, Possessing Nature, 43.
40
Franco Dotti and Attilio Zanca, “Fatti e figure della medicina mantovana durante il tardo
rinascimento,” in Mantova e i Gonzaga nella Civiltà del Rinascimento. Atti del convegno
dall’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e dall’Accademia Virgiliana con la collaborazione della
città di Mantova sotto l’alto patronato del Presidente della Repubblica Italiana Giovanni
Leone, Mantova 6–8 ottobre 1974 (Mantua: Accademia Virgiliana, 1977), 393–97, 393.
Dotti and Zanca list other museums in Mantua at p. 395. Donati was the author of De
medica historia mirabili libri sex (Mantua: per Franciscum Osanam, 1586). On Donati, see
Attilio Zanca, Notizie sulla vita e sulle opere di Marcello Donati da Mantova (1538–1602)
medico, umanista, uomo di stato (Pisa: Giardini, 1964).
Introduction 11
specimens physicians collected were understood as the equivalents – and

not merely the derivatives – of biblical products.41 The institution that
encouraged this pursuit of new plant samples and facilitated the effort
to handle biblical naturalia was the botanical garden. Botanical gardens
proliferated in the 1520s and 1530s, and Padua’s enjoyed a particularly
prestigious continental reputation.42 Many of the new drugs that were
imported to Venice and its nearby university in the 1530s, 1540s, and
1550s were exotic, and of those exotic drugs a high number came from
the Near East.43 Melchior Guilandinus, for one, believed that he had in
his garden the mysterious kikayon (gourd) mentioned in the book of
Jonah. Similarly, Aldrovandi enthused about Luca Ghini’s sending him,
from Padua, a branch from the specific kind of cedar tree mentioned in
the book of Jeremiah.44
In sixteenth-century Italy, especially in the medical community, there
was a widespread tendency to study nature with recourse to alterna-
tive sources of knowledge. The most prominent of these were vernacular
writings (in Italian) and artisanal experience. Recent scholarship on a
variety of early modern settings has explained how physicians learned
from those bereft of Latinate educations, artisans, and those involved
in the mechanical arts.45 Scholars have not neglected this aspect of
Renaissance Italy, either.46 But we know much less about people who
not only let manual trades and vernacular literature inform their medical
practice and natural philosophy but also let it transform their study of
the Bible. In different ways de’ Pomi’s and Portaleone’s lives and works
41
See herein, Chapters 1, 2, and 5.
42
Findlen, “The Formation of a Scientific Community,” 370.
43
Loris Premuda, “La medicina e l’organizzazione sanitaria,” in Girolamo Arnaldi and Manlio
Pastore Stocchi, eds., Storia della cultura veneta: Il Seicento, vol. 4, pt. 2 (Vicenza: N. Pozza,
1984), 115–50, 139.
44
See herein Chapter 2.
45
See, respectively, William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in
Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), and
Deborah Harkness, Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science
and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Tara
Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2007).
46
Matteo Duni, Tra religione e magia: storia del prete modenese Guglielmo Campana
(1460?–1541) (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1999); David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in
Early Modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 1–28, 156–76.
exemplify this trend, and examining their use of these types of sources
expands our understanding of Jewish intellectual life as well as learned
medicine in early modern Europe.
The fourth feature of sixteenth-century medicine that drew its prac-
titioners closer to studying the Bible is epidemiological. New diseases
and unprecedented problems emerged that required physicians to reach
beyond the standard practices they deployed. In an environment of
“medical pluralism,” some patients – wealthy and poor alike – eschewed
the services of university-trained physicians entirely and visited mounte-
banks, women healers, or other alternative practitioners.47 But doctors
with university degrees still attracted plenty of patients. In fact, there
were many more university-educated physicians in Italy than elsewhere
in Europe at the time. New World drugs, unknown to ancient writers
and medieval pharmacists, could be put to use in fighting new diseases,
such as morbus gallicus or syphilis. Plagues posed an even bigger chal-
lenge than sexually transmitted diseases. Katherine Park has argued that
the devastation wrought by plagues in the later Middle Ages provoked a
crisis of confidence in traditional medieval medicine.48 If plagues in thir-
teenth- and fourteenth-century Florence released a tremor that shook
the foundations of scholastic medicine, the plagues of the later sixteenth
century, especially that which struck Venice in 1571–2, generated a shock
wave that produced equal if not greater damage to the profession of
learned medicine.49 Jewish physicians had a ready-made response to the
anxiety and illness produced by plagues: they encouraged the intensified
recitation of certain portions of Jewish liturgy, namely those that list the
ingredients of ancient incense, or pitom qetoret. Recitation of those pas-
sages was thought to have salubrious effects, and Jewish doctors such
as Abraham Yagel and Abraham Catalano advocated and testified to
the diffusion of that practice.50 Some Jewish physicians did more than
47
See Gentilcore, Healers and Healing; Matteo Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell: Witches,
Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
2007), 71.
48
Katherine Park, Doctors and Medicine in Early Medieval Florence (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995) and herein, Chapter 3.
49
Paolo Preto, Peste e società a Venezia nel 1576 (Vicenza: N. Pozza, 1978).
50
See Abraham Yagel, Moshia H￹osim (Venice: Zuan di Gara, 1587), 17r–18r, for biblical
incense curing the plague, and 21v for biblical showbread as a prophylactic against various
maladies. Abraham Catalano, who died in 1642, wrote about the plague of 1630–1 in his
Olam Hafukh, which was published by Cecil Roth in Kovez￱ al Yad 4 (1946): 67–101, 74.
Introduction 13
read religious literature in times of contagion; a few put it directly to

use. David de’ Pomi, for example, responded to the challenging circum-
stances of those years by using biblical cures – in his case the tarshish
stone mentioned in Exodus 28 – to treat his patients. De’ Pomi touted
his own unusual methods in a bold letter to Pope Sixtus V, and he was
even recognized for his efforts in a 1589 dispatch from the papal nuncio
in Venice to the pope in Rome.51
Finally, Renaissance doctors were greatly interested in biblical and
postbiblical sacred texts. Many Jewish physicians in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries were rabbis or teachers in Jewish communities, and
nearly all had advanced training in Talmudic dialectics and other forms
of religious study. That the scrutiny of nature brought one closer to God
was a trope in Hebrew writings of the period, many of which approv-
ingly quoted the psalmist’s pronouncement that “the heavens declare
the glory of God.”52 Christian physicians were no less pious. In 1548
Mattioli wrote of the “spiritual pleasure” he derived from looking at
plants.53 In the same period his Northern European colleague Leonhart
Fuchs insisted that by studying “the various forms and natures of plants,
the divine presence and benignity is illuminated.”54 But medical men
were interested in more conventional spiritual pursuits, too: they stud-
ied biblical literature. For example, Françoise Lehoux has shown how, in
the libraries of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Parisian doctors, after
medical books the second most common classification was “les sciences
religieuses.” A few, such as René Chartier and Ponce Privat, who are
hardly known to history as religious thinkers, let alone Hebraists, owned
and read Hebrew Bibles.55
51
52
Psalm 19:1. See, for example, Judah Sommo, Z￵ah￵ut Bedih￵uta de-Kiddushin, ed. J. Schirmann
(Jerusalem: Sifre Tarshish, 1965 [orig. written ca. 1550]), 36; Gedaliah ibn Yah￶ya, Shalshelet
ha-Kabbalah (Warsaw, 1877 [1st ed., Venice: Zuan di Gara, 1586]), 146; Leon Modena, Ari
Nohem (Leipzig: K. Tauchnitz, 1840 [orig. written 1639]), 18–19.
53
Richard Palmer, “Medical Botany in Northern Italy in the Renaissance,” Journal of the
Royal Society of Medicine 78 (February 1985): 149–57, 150.
54
Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Basel: in officina Isingriniana,
1542), sig. *2v. Quoted in Brian W. Ogilvie, “Natural History, Ethics, and Physico-Theology,”
in Nancy Siraisi and Gianna Pomata, eds., Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 75–104, 90.
55
Françoise Lehoux, Le cadre de vie des médecines parisienes aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles
(Paris: Éditions A. & J. Picard, 1976), 485–6.
The Bible and Medicine in Late Renaissance Italy

The Bible was central to both Jewish and Christian education in the
sixteenth century. In Italian Jewish culture of the Renaissance, the Bible
was particularly esteemed. The education that Jewish students received
placed a heavy emphasis on biblical literacy.56 Numerous sources bear
witness to the fact that children as young as three or four years of age
were able to read and chant portions of scripture.57 Even if these sources
exaggerate the accomplishments of precocious children, they are valu-
able to the historian as they indicate a cultural aspiration as much as
a reality. In late fifteenth-century texts, such as Yoh￶annan Alemanno’s
study program, the Bible is prominently featured.58 The same is true of
sixteenth-century educational documents, such as the Provenzali family’s
proposal for a Jewish academy.59 Seventeenth-century sources are even
56
Shlomo Simonsohn, “Jewish Education in the Renaissance (until the 17th century)” (Hebrew),
in Entsiklopedyah H￹inukhit, 4 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1959–74), 4:376–81.
57
A note in a prayer book of the Italian rite, written in 1514 by Daniel ben Shmuel of Rosina,
who in that year resided in Ferrara, observed that “at four and a half years of age [a child]
recited the haftorah in synagogue.” Jewish National and University Library, Ms. Roth 3.
The note is reproduced in Simh￶a Asaf, Mek￵orot le-toldot ha-h￵inukh be-Yiśra’el (New York:
Bet ha-midrash le-rabanim ba-Amerikah, 2001–9 [Tel Aviv: Devir, 1925–29]), 1:255. See
also David Reuveni’s comment that the physician Moses Abudrahin of Rome had “a young
daughter who read the twenty four [books of the Bible.]” ‫ויש לו בת בחורה הקוראה בעשרים וארבע‬
in E. Z. Eshkoli, ed., Sipur David ha-Re’uveni (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1993), 39. Finally, see also
Leon Modena’s comment in his Istoria de’ riti ebraici (Paris, 1637), Hebrew translation
Solomon Ruben (Vienna, 1867), 104: ‫ ואח"כ הוא‬, ‫כאשר יבין הנער לדבר אביו מחנכו לקרוא בתורה‬
‫“ מלמדו לתרגם את המקרא ללשון הארץ אשר הוא מתגורר בה‬When the boy is able to speak, his father
instructs him how to read the Torah, and afterward he teaches him to translate scripture into
the language of the land where he lives.”
58
On Alemanno, see Fabrizio Lelli, “L’educazione ebraica nella seconda metà del ‘400: poe-
tica e scienze naturali nel H￹ay ha-’Olamim di Yoh￶anan Alemanno,” Rinascimento, n.s., 36
(1996): 75–136, and Moshe Idel, “The Study Program of R. Yoh￶anan Alemanno” (Hebrew),
Tarbiz￱ 48 (1979–80): 303–31.
59
On Provenzali, see Gianfranco Miletto, “The Teaching Program of David ben Abraham
and His Son Abraham Provenzali in Its Historical-Cultural Context,” in David Ruderman
and Giuseppe Veltri, eds., Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern
Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 127–48. To these examples
one could add a seventeenth-century curricular text: the Cretan Jewish polymath Joseph
Delmedigo’s Mikhtav ah￵uz. However, that document’s history and interpretation have been
subjects of deep scholarly debate. See Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery
in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 146–52. More recently,
see Jordan S. Penkower, “S. D. Luzzatto, Vowels, and Accents and the Date of the Zohar,” in
Robert Bonfil, Isaac Gotlieb, and Hannah Kasher, eds., Samuel David Luzzatto (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 2004), 79–130: 128. See also Arthur Lesley, “Il richiamo agli ‘antichi’ nella
Introduction 15
more abundant and detailed: curricula from Jewish primary schools,

such as one from midcentury Verona, indicate the dominant role the
Bible played in early education.60
In late medieval and early modern Jewish culture, one area of knowl-
edge whose acquisition was especially prized, and whose deploy-
ment in the service of biblical study was highly praised, was natural
philosophy. There were strong practical reasons for this endorsement
of scientific literacy. For example, community rabbis were poorly
paid: in sixteenth-century Venice, they earned as much in a year as a
master builder earned in a month.61 Practicing medicine was a licit and
respected way for rabbis to earn a living wage in Renaissance Italy, and
many did so.62
But there were strong cultural forces that legitimized and encouraged
the study of natural philosophy. In the high and late Middle Ages, Jewish
thinkers as diverse as Bah￶ya ibn Paqudah, Maimonides, Judah Ha-Levi,
and Gersonides all proclaimed that studying natural sciences promoted
piety.63 Their works were frequently printed and often read in the
sixteenth century.64 In Renaissance Mantua, for example, Judah Messer
cultura ebraica fra quattro e cinquecento,” in Corrado Vivanti, ed., Storia d’Italia Annali
11/1, Gli ebrei in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 387–409, esp. 394–400.
60
One document dating from 1688, and published by Isaiah Sonne, makes it plain that
children between five and seven years of age studied scripture and its cantillation marks
in the morning, early afternoon, and early evening. Asaf, Mek￵orot le-toldot ha-h￵inukh
be-Yiśra’el, 1:284–5; for Sonne’s introduction to this document, see 1:280–3.
61
Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy, trans. Jonathan
Chipman (New York: Littman Library, 1990), 157–68, esp. 160.
62
Ibid., 189–90 and notes there.
63
For Bah￶ya, see H￹ovot ha-levavot, trans. Moses Hymanson, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Kiryat ne’ema-
nah, 1962), 1:133; G. Vajda, La theologie ascétique de Bahya ibn Pakuda (Paris: Imprimerie
Nationale, 1947). For Maimonides, see Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 2:2. For
Ha-Levi, see Sefer ha-Kuzari 1:68. On Gersonides, see Charles Touati, La pensée philoso-
phique et théologique de Gersonide (Paris: Éditions de minuit, 1973), 33; Gad Freudenthal,
ed., Studies on Gersonides: A Fourteenth-Century Jewish Philosopher-Scientist, Collection
de travaux de l’Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Science 36 (Leiden: Brill, 1992);
Freudenthal, “Spiritual Success and Astronomy: Gersonides’ War against Ptolemy”
(Hebrew), Da’at 22 (1989): 55–72; Freudenthal, “Cosmogonie et physique chez Gersonide,”
REJ 145 (1986): 295–314; G. Dahan, ed., Gersonide en son temps. Science et philosophie
médiévales (Louvain: E. Peeters, 1991). Much of this literature is discussed in Ruderman,
Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery, 21–44.
64
For Gersonides in sixteenth-century Jewish libraries, see Shifra Baruchson, Sefarim
ve-k￵or’im: tarbut ha-k￵eri’ah shel Yehude Italyah be-shilhe ha-Renesans (Ramat-Gan: Bar
Ilan University Press, 1993), 125–7, 149, 151, 166–7; J.-P. Rothschild, “Les listes de livres,
reflet de la culture des juifs en Italie du nord au XVe et au XVIe siècle?,” in G. Tamani and
Leon operated a school for young men whose purpose was to prepare
them to study medicine at university.65 Judah’s son David queried one
of his generation’s leading scholars, Jacob ben David Provenzali, about
the permissibility of studying natural sciences in the eyes of Jewish law.66
Provenzali’s response was unambiguous: while works that denied cre-
atio ex nihilo were to be avoided, given that they challenged pious con-
ceptions of God’s role as creator, medicine was not only unthreatening
but even appealing. He lauded “the artes naturales, and above all med-
icine, for there is no science in the world today that sustains its masters
with honor as this one does . . . . accordingly I praise it [medicine] and
say that it is good to hold fast to it as many of our rabbis, may peace
be upon them, held fast to it.”67 Judah Messer Leon’s Sefer Nofet Z￴ufim
(Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow) explained how knowledge of secular
subjects could enrich one’s understanding of Scripture. “After we have
come to know all the sciences,” Messer Leon explained, “or some part
of them, we study the words of the Torah, then the eyes of our under-
standing open to the fact that the sciences are included in the Torah’s
words, and we wonder how we could have failed to realize this from the
Torah itself to begin with.”68 Those were words that David de’ Pomi or
A. Vivian, eds., Manoscritti, frammenti e libri ebraici nell’Italia dei secoli XV–XVI (Rome:
Carucci, 1991), 163–93, esp. 175–6, 180–1; Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities, 272–
80; Bonfil, “Le biblioteche degli ebrei d’Italia nel Rinascimento,” in Tamani and Vivian,
Manoscritti, frammenti e libri ebraici, 137–50.
65
Messer Leon’s school was open from 1473 to 1475. On 21 February 1469, Messer Leon
was granted the right to confer degrees on other Jews by Emperor Frederick III. See Isaac
Rabinowitz, ed. and trans., The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1983), xxiv–xxvi. For similar examples from Padua in the sixteenth cen-
tury, see Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery, 100–15. For Jewish students
elsewhere in Europe, see Yosef Kaplan, “Sephardi Students at the University of Leiden,”
in Kaplan, An Alternative Path to Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 196–210; Israel Bartal,
“Jews in Eastern European Higher Education” (Hebrew), in Michael Heyd and Shaul Katz,
eds., Toledot ha-Universita ha-Ivrit bi-Yerushalayim (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997),
75–89.
66
See Miletto, “The Teaching Program,” 134.
67
See E. Askenazi, Divrei h￵akhamim (Metz: J. Mayer Samuel, 1849), 63–75, 71: ‫והמלאכות‬
‫ ועל זה שבחתי אותה ואמרתי‬. . .‫הטבעיות וכש''כ הרפואה שהרי אין חכמה היום בעולם שתחיה את בעליה בכבוד כזו‬
‫ שטוב להחזיק בה כמו שהחזיקו בה הרבה מרבותינו ע''ה‬The locution “hold fast to it” is an allusion to
Proverbs 3:18, where the referent is God’s law.
68
Sefer Nofet Z￲ufim, book 1, chap. 13, Rabinowitz ed., 145, Hebrew at 144:‫כי אחרי ידענו כל‬
‫ ונתמה איך לא הבננו‬,‫ אז תפקחנה עיני שכלנו שהם נכללות בדברי התורה‬,‫ א"כ נתבונן בדברי התורה‬,‫החכמות או חלק מהם‬
‫ זה ממנה מתחלת הענין‬I have used Rabinowitz’s translation. On Messer Leon, see Robert Bonfil,
“The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow by Judah Messer Leon: The Rhetorical Dimension
Introduction 17
Abraham Portaleone could have uttered with conviction. The belief that
expertise in areas of study such as rhetoric, poetics, and natural philoso-
phy was compatible with, and even complementary to, study of the Bible
was a tenet of Jewish culture in early modern Italy. Leone Modena freely
admitted to drawing from “the best Latin Bibles” in compiling Galut
Yehudah, his dictionary of difficult biblical words.69 A quarter century
earlier, as Joanna Weinberg has observed, Azariah de’ Rossi elucidated
rabbinic texts “by means of non-Jewish sources divested of all ideologi-
cal or religious bias.”70 This interdisciplinary approach to biblical study
was one that Christian intellectuals such as Ulisse Aldrovandi, Melchior
Guilandinus, and Andrea Bacci advocated and practiced as well.
David de’ Pomi and Abraham Portaleone could turn to Jewish writings
from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries for expressions of
the compatibility of general culture and biblical literacy. Their Christian
contemporaries could, too. The clearest example is Erasmus. Though
condemned as a heretic in 1559, Erasmus had considerable influence in
post-Tridentine Italy.71 Aldrovandi, for example, was even accused of,
and punished for, participating in circles where “Lutheran” texts were
read and discussed.72 Erasmus’s Ratio seu methodus compendio perve-
niendi ad veram theologiam urged interpreters of the Bible to study the
geography and natural history of the ancient Near East.73 Knowledge
of Jewish Humanism in Fifteenth-Century Italy,” Jewish History 6:1–2 (1992): 21–33, 26;
Daniel Carpi, “Rabbi Judah Messer Leon and His Activity as a Doctor” (Hebrew), Michael
1 (1973): 277–301; reprinted in Qorot 6 (1974): 395–415, and also in Carpi, Be-tarbut ha-
Renesans u-ven h￵omot ha-get￶o (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Project, 1989), 57–84, and in
abbreviated form in “Notes on the Life of Rabbi Judah Messer Leon,” in Elio Toaff, ed., Studi
sull’ebraismo italiano in memoria di Cecil Roth (Rome: Barulli, 1974), 37–62.
69
Leone Modena, Galut Yehudah (Venice: Giacomo Sarzina, 1612), “L’autore alli benigni let-
tori,” Sig *Av, where he notes that he used “i migliori dittionarii . . . il mikhlol, e il ‫חשק שלמה‬,
spagnolo ottimo, e le miglior Bibie latini.” Modena’s book was dedicated to a Christian
physician, “il signor Gioanni Vislingio Cavalliero, lettor primario d’Anatomia, e de Simplici
nello Studio di Padoa.” Unnumbered folio following title page.
70
Weinberg, The Light of the Eyes, xxxi.
71
Gigliola Fragnito, “The Central and Peripheral Organization of Censorship,” in Fragnito, ed.,
Church, Censorship, and Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 13–49, 30. For the circulation of Erasmus’s works in sixteenth-century Italy,
see ibid., n. 57.
72
73
Kristine Louise Haugen, “A French Jesuit’s Lectures on Vergil, 1582–1583: Jacques
Sirmond between Literature, History and Myth,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30:4 (1999):
967–85, 979.
of natural philosophy was especially praised: “He seems truly learned,”

Erasmus observed, “and [his learning] is increased if he adds the fol-
lowing things: names of precious stones, kinds of trees, and species of
animals.”74 To attain such knowledge, Erasmus did not hesitate to use
pagan works of natural philosophy, such as Pliny and Dioscorides in his
explication of scripture.75
In the Renaissance, studying the Bible was an inclusive undertaking
that welcomed many diverse disciplinary perspectives.76 Throughout the
early modern period, from Desiderius Erasmus in the early sixteenth cen-
tury to Joseph Scaliger in the early seventeenth and beyond, virtually all
serious students of the Bible drew on classical texts to supplement their
understanding of it, often without questioning the implications of using
pagan literature to elucidate sacred literature. Joseph Scaliger exhorted
aspiring biblical exegetes to “read good authors, Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
and the Talmud: they are necessary for [an understanding of] the Bible.”77
If Ovid’s Metamorphoses was relevant to the Bible, Dioscorides’ and
Theophrastus’ works certainly were, since they described plants, miner-
als, and animals that early modern scholars understood to be the equiva-
lents of those mentioned in scripture.
From the mid-sixteenth century on, a conspicuous number of studies
were devoted to identifying and describing the natural particulars in the
Bible. Medieval precedents are not entirely lacking. A few Christian com-
mentators such as Nicholas of Lyra (1270–1340) had made an effort to
identify and describe the plants, animals, and minerals of s cripture.78 But in
the sixteenth century the number of scholars interested in biblical natural
74
Erasmi Roterdami Methodus, originally published with his Novum Instrumentum. See
Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Hajo Holborn and Annemarie
Holborn (Munich: Beck, 1933), 154: “abunde doctum videtur, si tantum adiecerint: est
nomen gemmae, aut species est arboris aut genus animantis.”
75
Jacques Chomarat, Grammaire et rhétorique chez Erasme, 2 vols. (Paris: Belles Lettres,
1981), 1:553.
76
Deborah Shuger, The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994), 4.
77
Scaligerana, ou Bons mots, rencontres agreables, et remarques judicieuses & sçavantes de J.
Scaliger (Amsterdam: n.p., 1695), 453. For discussion, see H. J. de Jonge, “The Study of the
New Testament in the Dutch Universities, 1575–1700,” in Th. H. Lunsing Scheurleer and
G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes, eds., Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century, trans. J. C.
Grayson (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 65–110, 84.
78
For recent scholarship on Nicholas of Lyra, see the essays collected in Phillip D. W. Krey and
Lesley Smith, eds., Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture (Leiden: Brill, 2000). On Lyra
Introduction 19
philosophy swelled, and the scope of their investigations expanded. One

impetus for the proliferation of these studies was the revival of certain
patristic writings. The work of Augustine in particular endorsed the pur-
suit of natural philosophical knowledge. In the second book of his De
doctrina christiana, Augustine emphasized that Christians have a duty to
study scripture’s natural world.79 Augustine was widely read and enjoyed
an enhanced reputation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as more
attention was paid to some of his theological positions.80 As such, a num-
ber of church authorities and devout humanists took his prescriptions for
study seriously. For example, Gabriele Paleotti explicitly cited Augustine
when he challenged Ulisse Aldrovandi to examine the natural world
of the Bible. Aldrovandi willingly took up the charge and mentioned
Augustine’s support for natural philosophy in several of his writings.81
And Paleotti was by no means the only theologian to enlist the support
of a natural philosopher. Girolamo Vielmi, as we have seen, referred to
his helpful conversations with Guilandinus about plants in Genesis. The
close attention Vielmi paid to natural topics in his De sex diebus conditi
orbis liber (Book on the six days of the creation of the world) may well
have been motivated by his reading of Augustine.
and Jewish texts, see Deeana Copeland Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra
and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2007). On the availability of de Lyra in print, see E. A. Gosselin, “A
Listing of the Printed Editions of Nicholas de Lyra,” Traditio 26 (1970): 399–426. For
Nicholas of Lyra’s antiquarian and scientific interests, see B. Roussel “Connaissance et inter-
prétation du Judaïsme antique: des biblistes chrétiens de la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle,”
in Chantal Grell and François Laplanche, eds., La République des lettres et l’histoire du
judaïsme antique XVIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 1992),
21–50, 28.
79
PL 34:46–9. See herein Chapters 1 and 2. Augustine also raises similar issues in his De
Genesi ad litteram, PL 34:219–486. For an English edition, see John Hammond Taylor, St.
Augustine: The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 2 vols. (New York: Newman Press, 1982).
80
Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian
Renaissance Thought, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 1:18, 2:529;
Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late
Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 370; Heiko
Augustinus Oberman, ed., Via Augustini: Augustine in the Later Middle Ages, Renaissance
and Reformation. Essays in Honor of Damasus Trapp, O.S.A. (Leiden: Brill, 1991); Charles
Stinger, “Italian Renaissance Learning and the Church Fathers,” in Irena Backus, ed., The
Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, 2 vols.
(Leiden: Brill, 2001), 2:473–510.
81
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 54, Theatrum biblicum naturale (2 vols.), 1:5v–6r; BUB Ms. Aldrovandi
91, Discorso naturale, 542r; and in a letter of 12 November 1567 to the protettore of the
Collegio di Spagna, BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 66, 355–67, 362v.
A patristic revival was one reason a diverse group of Italian scholars

carefully examined the Bible in the sixteenth century. Another was the
influence of interconfessional Christian debates. Historians have ana-
lyzed the ways that followers of Luther and Calvin studied the Bible
with renewed enthusiasm in the second third of the sixteenth century.
Luther’s rejection of church authority and proposal of a sola scriptura
approach to matters of faith understandably drove many of his fol-
lowers to the Bible. But in the Catholic world there was a contempo-
rary and no less powerful incentive to biblical analysis: the Council of
Trent.
The Council of Trent (1545–63) instituted a number of changes,
including the refinement of church policies regarding a wide variety
of interpretative, juridical, and political matters.82 But one legacy of
the council that was equally important has received considerably less
attention. More than a century ago, Charles DeJob argued that, as a
direct result of the council, many Italians strengthened their commit-
ment to the study of sacred texts.83 Scholars such as Pietro Galesini,
Latino Latini, and Fulvio Orsini, none of whom was a professional
theologian, made conscious decisions to shift the focus of their
research from profane to sacred studies.84 The genre of Bible com-
mentaries expanded after Trent. The antiquarian Orsini, in a letter
to Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto, wrote about his newfound pleasure in
reading commentaries on Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.85 In a more famil-
iar instance, the Spanish theologian Benito Arias Montano mused in
1593 that Christian scholars had long been immersed in the study of
classical antiquity; it was now time to study sacred antiquities.86 But it
was not only theologians and antiquaries who shifted their attention
from pagan to sacred literature; medical men began to search scrip-
ture more diligently, too.
82
Eric Cochrane, Italy, 1525–1630 (London: Longman, 1988), 106–64.
83
Charles DeJob, De l’influence du Concile de Trente sur la littérature et les beaux-arts chez les
peuples catholiques: essai d’introduction à l’histoire littéraire du siècle de Louis XIV (Paris:
Ernest Thorin, 1884), ii.
84
Ibid., 8.
85
Quoted in ibid., 25–26. For more on Orsini, see William Stenhouse, Reading Inscriptions
and Writing Ancient History: Historical Scholarship in the Late Renaissance (London:
Institute of Classical Studies, 2005).
86
Benito Arias Montano, Antiquitatum iudaicarum libri IX (Leiden: Plantin, 1593), sig *A2.
Introduction 21
Certain features of sixteenth-century medicine, when applied to the

study of sacred texts, altered the way religious works had previously
been read. In addition to the several features of late Renaissance med-
ical culture already enumerated, three other epistemological and cog-
nitive assumptions enjoyed wide circulation in that culture and had a
strong influence on biblical studies. First, many sixteenth-century physi-
cians believed that truth, to use their expression, was filia temporis, the
“daughter of time.”87 As such, they embraced two related ideas: that as
traditions age they can absorb new findings and jettison old ones, and
that alien disciplines should be mastered in order to obtain more per-
fect knowledge.88 Second, for physicians experience was more important
than authority.89 Girolamo Cardano, Jean Riolan the Elder, and oth-
ers all maintained that the practice of medicine made doctors rely on
their senses more than on received tradition. Jean Riolan the Elder went
so far as to claim that “it is stupid to refute the senses and experience
with reason out of reverence for antiquity.”90 Third, at the beginning
of the seventeenth century the converso physician Rodericus a Castro,
reflecting on his profession, pointed out a crucial difference between
law and medicine: lawyers, like theologians and classicists, prioritized
words; doctors, on the whole, prioritized things.91 These three features of
87
See Fritz Saxl, “Veritas Filia Temporis,” in R. Klibansky and H. J. Paton, eds., Philosophy and
History: Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 197–222.
88
See Maclean, Logic, Signs, and the Order of Nature, 23, and the literature cited at n. 47.
Most studies focus on French-, English-, and German-speaking contexts. A notable excep-
tion is Nancy Siraisi’s article “Cardano and the History of Medicine,” in Marialuisa Baldi
and Guido Canziani, eds., Girolamo Cardano. Le opere, le fonti, la vita (Milan: F. Angeli,
1999), 342–62, 346.
89
On early modern medical authors’ efforts to balance experience, innovation, and authority,
see Richard Toellner, “Zum Begriff der Autorität in der Medizin der Renaissance,” in Rudolf
Schmitz and Gundolf Keil, eds., Humanismus und Medizin (Weinheim: Acta Humaniora,
1984), 159–79.
90
See Maclean, Logic, Signs, and the Order of Nature, 196 and the literature cited at nn.
203 and 204. Cardano wrote “cum igitur medicus sit sciens, et non purus artifex, et habeat
operari circa subiectum suum, et subiectum non constet unquam sub uno affectu propter
materiam: cogitur medicus solus inter omnes scientes diiudicare ex sensus, non ex rei veri-
tate.” Cardano, Opera Omnia (1663), 6, 415, quoted by Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror:
Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997),
51. For the Riolan quotation, “stultum est ratione pugnare contra sensum et experientiam
pro antiquitatis reverentia,” see Maclean, Logic, Signs, and the Order of Nature, 196.
91
See Rodericus a Castro, Medicus-politicus: sive de officiis medico-politicis tractatus
(Hamburg: Froben, 1614), 44–53. See also Maclean, Logic, Signs, and the Order of Nature,
231 n. 113. On a Castro, see Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery, 295–6.
medicine encouraged physicians to adopt a critical stance toward received

traditions and to relate to textual artifacts much as they did to physical
ones. This creative interpretation of ancient texts and tireless pursuit of
the physical realia listed within them enabled Aldrovandi to search for
manna in the Dolomite foothills and Portaleone to reconstruct biblical
incense in the piazze of Mantua. As such, this book presents a history of
material culture as well as of textual analysis. These professional habits
and cognitive skills led to and justified a desire not only to control the
language of scripture but to handle the physical objects that language
described.
Biblical Commentary in Jewish and Catholic

Learned Communities
In scholarship on Jewish culture in early modern Europe, biblical com-
mentary has not received sufficient attention.92 Given the centrality of
the Bible to premodern Jewish life, one might naturally ask why not.
One reason that explains this relative dearth of scholarship is that bib-
lical commentary, or parshanut, attracts close attention only when early
modern Jewish authors wrote in a recognizable genre. Isaac Abravanel,
Ovadiah Sforno, and Moses Alshekh – to choose three well-known
authors – all either composed line-by-line glosses or expatiated in late
medieval forms on key questions.93 However, explorations of the Bible
92
An exception is Kalman P. Bland, “Issues in Sixteenth-Century Jewish Exegesis,” in David
Steinmetz, ed., The Bible in the Sixteenth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1990), 50–67.
93
On Abravanel, see Benzion Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel, Statesman and Philosopher
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1953). Also, see Eric Lawee, Isaac
Abravanel’s Stance Towards Tradition: Defense, Dissent and Dialogue (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 2001); Cedric Cohen Skalli, “The Humanist Rhetoric of Don Isaac Abravanel: Rhetoric,
History and Tradition in his Introductions and Letters” (PhD thesis, Tel Aviv University,
2005) (Hebrew); and the essays collected by Menahem Kellner and Abraham Melamed in
Jewish History 23:3 (2009). On Sforno, the work of Ephraim Finkel, R. Obadja Sforno als
Exeget (Breslau: Druck von T. Schatzky, 1896) is still reliable. See also the editors’ intro-
duction to Kitvei Rabbi ‘Ovadyah Sforno, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad Ha-Rav Kuk, 1983).
See also Robert Bonfil, “Il Rinascimento: la produzione esegetica di ‘O. Servadio Sforno,” in
Sergio S. Sierra, ed., La lettura ebraica delle Scritture (Bologna: EDB, 1995), 261–77; Saverio
Campanini, “Un intellettuale ebreo del Rinascimento: ‘Ovadyah Sforno a Bologna e i suoi
rapporti con i cristiani,” in Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ed., Verso l’epilogo di una convi-
venza: gli ebrei a Bologna nel XVI secolo (Florence: Giuntina, 1996), 99–128. On Alshekh,
Introduction 23
may be found in other genres as well, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias,

personal letters, and medical treatises. In order to understand Jewish
Bible exegesis more fully, scholars must widen their lens and look at
many different sorts of texts. Much biblical commentary is to be found
in works not explicitly advertised as such. Neither David de’ Pomi nor
Abraham Portaleone wrote in a genre that was immediately – or even
eventually – recognized as a channel for biblical analysis.
While these genres have not received much attention, others, especially
sixteenth-century printings of the Bible and anthologies of medieval com-
mentaries on it, have. Of these, the most important is the Rabbinic Bible
published at Venice by Daniel Bomberg in 1517, and again in expanded
format in 1524–5.94 The Rabbinic Bible was innovative in two ways: it
featured a new, complete set of notes on the Masorah, or authoritative
text of the Hebrew Bible, and it contained important medieval Hebrew
commentaries, chiefly those of Rashi and Abraham Ibn Ezra. Although
the publication of a newly edited Masoretic text by Jacob ben H￺ayim
ibn Adonijah was a watershed moment in the printing of Hebrew Bibles,
and the inclusion of several commentaries changed the way scripture was
studied by both Jews and Christians,95 the Rabbinic Bible was a har-
vest of medieval learning. While its format was innovative, its content
see Albert van der Heide, “Created at Dusk: Abraham’s Ram in Medieval Jewish Bible
Exegesis,” in Ulf Haxen, Hanne Trautner-Kromann, and Karen Lisa Goldschmidt Salamon,
eds., Jewish Studies in a New Europe: Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of Jewish Studies in
Copenhagen, 1994 (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel A/S International Publishers, 1998), 365–71;
Simon Shalem, Rabbi Moses Alshekh (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1966); Bland,
“Issues in Sixteenth-Century Jewish Exegesis,” 62 and literature there.
94
Jordan Penkower, “Jacob ben Hayyim and the Rise of the Biblia Rabbinica” (PhD diss.,
Hebrew University, 1982); Penkower, “The Chapter Divisions of the 1525 Rabbinic Bible,”
Vetus Testamentum 48:3 (1998): 350–74.
95
Elchanan Reiner, “The Ashkenazi Élite at the Beginning of the Modern Era: Manuscript
versus Printed Book,” in Gershon Hundert, ed., Polin, vol. 10: Jews in Early Modern Poland
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, 1997), 85–98; Reiner, “The
Attitude of Ashkenazi Society to the New Science in the Sixteenth Century,” Science in Context
10 (1997): 589–603; Reiner, “Transformations in the Polish and Ashkenazic Yeshivot during
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and the Dispute over Pilpul” (Hebrew), in Israel
Bartal, Chava Turnianksy, and Ezra Mendelsohn, eds., Ke-Minhag Ashkenaz ve-Polin: Sefer
Yovel le-Khone Shmeruk (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 1989), 9–80, 45–6. Stephen Burnett,
“The Strange Career of the Biblia Rabbinica among Christian Hebraists, 1517–1620,” in
Matthew McLean and Bruce Gordon, eds., Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books,
Scholars and Readers in the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 63–84. I would like to
thank Stephen Burnett for sharing a draft of his chapter with me before publication.
was not.96 The medieval commentaries included represent a sampling, and

not a summary, of medieval biblical interpretation. Works by Menah￶em
Recanati and Moses Nah￶manides, to select two conspicuous examples,
were widely read but not to be found between the Rabbinic Bible’s cov-
ers.97 Of the Rabbinic Bible’s two features, the newly edited Masoretic
text was perceived at the time as much more important than the medie-
val commentaries. Jacob ben H￸ayim ibn Adonijah’s own introduction to
the 1525 edition of the Rabbinic Bible, for example, says almost nothing
about the novelty of the exegesis included therein. At the same time, it
expatiates about the quest for, and use of, the far-flung Masoretic manu-
scripts from which ibn Adonijah carried out his exhaustive research.98 The
impact of the Rabbinic Bible in Eastern Europe was profound, and many
rabbis reacted unfavorably to it, as they perceived in its Sephardic con-
tent a challenge to Ashkenazi hegemony on biblical interpretation.99 We
know less about how Italian scholars and educators reacted to this text.
To intellectual omnivores like David de’ Pomi and Abraham Portaleone,
the gleanings of the medieval commentaries they read in the Rabbinic
Bible could not satiate their hunger to demonstrate that broad culture,
derived from diverse disciplines, could explicate scripture.
By and large, sixteenth-century Italian Jews declined to comment
on the Bible in traditional forums. One reason for this may have been
the effects of what Ann Blair has described as information overload.100
96
David Stern, “The Rabbinic Bible in Its Sixteenth-Century Context,” in Joseph R. Hacker
and Adam Shear, eds., The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 76–108. I would like to thank David Stern for sharing an earlier
draft of his essay with me.
97
On Recanati, see Moshe Idel, Rabbi Menah￵em Recanati ha-Mekubal (Jerusalem: Shocken,
1998). A second volume of Idel’s work was to have included three chapters (22–24) on
Recanati’s commentary on the Pentateuch; to date it has not appeared. See 1:77–78, how
ever, for brief remarks on Recanati as a Bible commentator. On Nah￶manides, see Isidore
Twersky, Rabbi Moses Nah￵manides: Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
98
For the Hebrew text with an English translation, see Christian D. Ginsburg, ed. and trans.,
Jacob ben Chajim ibn Adonijah’s Introduction to the Rabbinic Bible, Hebrew and English . . .
and the Massoreth ha-Massoreth of Elias Levita, being an exposition of the Massoretic
notes on the Hebrew Bible or the ancient critical apparatus of the Old Testament (London:
Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1867).
99
See Reiner’s studies listed earlier in note 95.
100
Ann Blair, “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload, ca. 1550–1700,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 64:1 (2003): 11–29; Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing
Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).
Introduction 25
A flood of late antique and medieval commentaries on the Bible was

printed in the second third of the sixteenth century. For example, from
1543 to 1547, thirteen different homiletical and exegetical works rolled
off the press – in Venice alone.101 Late antique and medieval commen-
taries were not the only Hebrew works on the Bible to be printed in
the sixteenth century; contemporary scholars in the Ottoman Empire
such as Isaac Caro and Moses ben Baruch Almosnino published printed
works on the Bible as well.102
In this book I try to avoid the allures of historical hindsight. I refrain
from judging the achievements of Italian Jewish scholars of the Bible
according to the standards of later periods. As Donald Kelley observed
about sixteenth-century French historians, their work should be assessed
in terms not only of their results or the extent of their direct influence
but also of the questions they thought of asking and of the means they
devised to answer them.103 This project argues that the questions David
de’ Pomi and Abraham Portaleone thought of asking and the means they
devised to answer them originated in the culture of sixteenth-century
learned medicine.
Recently, scholarship on Jews in early modern Europe has moved
away from trying to ascertain how Jews contributed to surrounding
culture, since such a question presupposes that Jews were outside of,
and apart from, those cultures. Current work instead shows how Jews
were integrated members of premodern societies and has suggested
that social and legal interactions between Jews and Christians should
be understood as “a two-way street.”104 Intellectual interactions might
101
See Julius Fürst, Bibliotheca Judaica: Bibliographisches Handbuch der gesammten jüdischen
Literatur mit Einschluss der Schriften über Juden und Judenthum und einer Geschichte der
jüdischen Bibliographie, 3 vols. (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1849–63), 3:452.
102
Isaac Caro, Toledot Yitzhak (Constantinople, 1518; Mantua, 1552; Riva di Trento, 1558;
Salonika, 1571). Moses ben Baruch Almosnino, Yedei Moshe (1582), a commentary on the
Five Scrolls; Almosnino, Tefilah le-Moshe (Constantinople, 1563), on the Pentateuch and
prayer book. On Almosnino, see N. Ben-Menahem, “Towards a Bibliography of R. Moses
Almosnino” (Hebrew), Sefunot 11 (1978): 135–85.
103
Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law and
History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 308.
104
David Biale, ed., Cultures of the Jews: A New History (New York: Schocken Books, 2002),
part 2; Kenneth Stow, Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 69. See also David N. Myers’s introduction
to Stow et al., Acculturation and Its Discontents: The Italian Jewish Experience between
Exclusion and Integration (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), esp. 5.
be profitably understood in this way as well. When Portaleone treated

the Gonzaga family and when de’ Pomi administered cures to afflicted
Venetians during the plague of 1571–2, they may have been perceived
as Jews but they acted, respectively, as Mantuan and Venetian subjects.
As Jews themselves were part of the fabric of early modern Italian soci-
ety, their scholarly achievements deserve to be included in narratives of
Renaissance intellectual history.
The investigation of how Jewish thought contributed to the Jews’
host societies, common in previous generations, has a strong parallel in
canonical studies of Renaissance biblical scholarship. Arnold Williams,
for example, strived to delineate how Renaissance commentators con-
tributed to the knowledge of their day. His answer was not at all.
Instead, he wrote, they “only mirror the dominant concepts of the cul-
ture of which they were a part.”105 I submit that Williams’s question is
the wrong one to ask. If we were to judge the works of early modern
Jewish physicians by this standard, they would surely come up short. At
the end of the seventeenth century, Tobias Cohen, who held a medical
degree from Padua, denounced Copernicus’s heliocentric theories and
assured his readers that the sixteenth-century Polish astronomer was “in
the cauldron of Satan.”106 Rather than probe the historical record for
signs of progress, this project analyzes how sixteenth-century students
of the Bible used the culture of their own day to elucidate a sacred text.
Doing so leads us to reach richer conclusions from our investigations –
conclusions not about how Renaissance Jews contributed to the general
knowledge of their day but about how they created it, just like their
Christian contemporaries.
In Renaissance history and the history of medicine, a similar set of
issues persists. Modern scholars of Renaissance medicine have charted
the evolution of the medical profession in the sixteenth century and noted
the expanding interests of Renaissance physicians.107 At the same time
105
Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor: An Account of the Commentaries on Genesis,
1527–1633 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 198.
106
Tobias Cohen, Ma’aseh Tuviyyah (Venice: Bragadin, 1705), 52r: ‫הוא‬ ‫כי בכור שטן‬
107
See Giuseppe Olmi, Inventario del mondo: catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere
nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992); Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature:
Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994); and most recently the studies collected in Nancy Siraisi and Gianna
Introduction 27
they have largely neglected their acute interest in the Bible, perceiving
neither the tendency of doctors to study and write about the Bible nor
the strong connections between natural philosophy and biblical analysis.
One problem is linguistic: during the Renaissance many Italian scholars
with medical degrees worked with a bewildering array of Near Eastern
tongues. Ulisse Aldrovandi, whose work is the subject of Chapters 1
and 2, interlards quotations in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac through-
out his work. But the general neglect of this topic is more complicated
and ideological. After all, linguistic deficiencies may be overcome; deeply
rooted ideological biases are harder to loosen.
One of these biases, inculcated by generations of Anglophone scholar-
ship sympathetic to Protestant societies, is an overemphasis on Northern
Europe at the expense of Southern Europe. Students of biblical studies
in early modern Europe miss key sources because of their preference
for Northern European texts. They assume that the main instigation of
renewed study of Greek and Hebrew was the Protestant Reformation
and associated confessional strife, and that northern writers such as
Erasmus, Reuchlin, and Melanchthon led the way.108 In short, according
to this line of thinking, Catholics did not take the Bible seriously and
their church was too repressive and regressive to allow them to.109
But Europeans south of the Alps also took the Bible seriously. From
the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, people who trained, worked, or
spent significant time in Italy contributed greatly to the advancement of
this field. As Charles Trinkaus observed, Italians of the Renaissance stud-
ied the Bible with more ardor than is generally assumed. Trinkaus also
Pomata, eds., Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2005).
108
See, for example, Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural
Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); D. C. Allen, The Legend of Noah:
Renaissance Rationalism in Art, Science, and Letters (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1949), 43. For exceptions to this trend, see Michael O’Connor, “A Neglected Facet of
Cardinal Cajetan: Biblical Reform in High Renaissance Rome,” in Richard Griffiths, ed.,
The Bible in the Renaissance: Essays on Biblical Commentary and Translation in the
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (London: Ashgate, 2001), 71–94; Guy Bedouelle, “Le
débat catholique sur la traduction de la Bible en langue vulgaire,” in Théorie et pratique de
l’exégèse: actes du troisième Colloque international sur l’histoire de l’exégèse biblique au
XVIe siècle (Genève, 31 août–2 septembre 1988) (Geneva: Droz, 1990), 39–59.
109
Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo: la censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della
Scrittura (1471–1605) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997); Fragnito, Proibito capire: La Chiesa e il
volgare nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005).
demonstrated how biblical studies were an outgrowth of Renaissance

humanism rather than an import from Protestant Northern Europe.110
Besides the scholars discussed in this book, Gianozzo Manetti, Sante
Pagnini, Augustinus Steuchus, Antonio Brucioli, Benito Arias Montano,
Angelo Canini, Marco Marini, and Athanasius Kircher – the list could
go on – all scrutinized the Old Testament and aided their contemporar-
ies’ understanding of it. Some work has begun to examine these figures,
but much more remains to be done.111 The study of Hebrew was a key
component of their intellectual lives. Sixteenth-century Italian biblical
humanists, as Paul Grendler has shown, integrated Hebrew learning into
“mainstream Catholic biblical scholarship.”112 One direction for future
research might be to improve our understanding of the motivations
for intensified study of Hebrew and Greek in Renaissance Italy. Both,
after all, were taught in Rome at La Sapienza from 1480 on, well before
Erasmus could have learned either at the Collegium Trilingue in Leuven.
110
Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness, 1:559.
111
On Kircher, see Paula Findlen, ed., The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New York:
Routledge, 2004); Daniel Stolzenberg, ed., The Great Art of Knowing: The Baroque
Encyclopedia of Athanasius Kircher (Stanford: Stanford University Libraries, 2001);
Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus: Antiquarianism, Oriental Studies and Occult Philosophy
in the Work of Athanasius Kircher” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2003); on Canini, see
Joanna Weinberg, “A Sixteenth-Century Hebraic Approach to the New Testament,” in
C. R. Ligot and J.-L. Quantin, eds., History of Scholarship (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006), 231–49; on Arias Montano, see María Asunción Sánchez Manzano, Prefacios
de Benito Arias Montano a la Biblia Regia de Felipe II, Colección Humanistas Españoles
32 (León: Universidad de León, 2006); Stefania Tuzi, Le colonne e il Tempio di Salomone:
la storia, la leggenda, la fortuna (Rome: Gangemi, 2002), 128–30; on Marini, see Giovanni
Luigi Mingarelli’s “Marci Marini Vita,” in Marci Marini Brixiani Canonici Regularis
Congregationis Rhenanae Sanctissimi Salvatoris Annotationes Literales In Psalmos
(Bologna: apud Thomam Colli ex Typographia Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, 1748), x–xxii,
which has not yet been surpassed. See also Vincenzo Peroni, Biblioteca bresciana (Bologna,
1818–23), 2:222–3; Gustave Sacerdote, “Deux index expurgatoires de livres hebreux,”
REJ 30 (1896): 262–71, 264; Fausto Parente, “La Chiesa e il Talmud,” in Corrado Vivanti,
ed., Storia d’Italia, Annali II: Gli ebrei in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1996): 521–643, 605; on
Manetti, see Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness, 1:230–70; on Steuchus, see Ronald
Keith Delph, “Italian Humanism in the Early Reformation: Agostino Steuco (1497–1548)”
(PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1987), and Charles B. Schmitt, “Perennial Philosophy:
From Agostino Steuco to Leibniz,” Journal of the History of Ideas 27:4 (October–December
1966): 505–32; on Brucioli, see Giorgio Spini, Tra rinascimento e riforma: Antonio Brucioli
(Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1940); on Pagnini, see T. M. Centi, “L’attività letteraria di Santi
Pagnini.”
112
Paul Grendler, “Italian Biblical Humanism and the Papacy,” in Erika Rummel, ed., Biblical
Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Leiden: Brill, 2008): 227–76, 276.
Introduction 29
Similarly, Hebrew studies flourished in Spain, at places like Salamanca

and Alcalá, before they took root in the Netherlands or in the Holy
Roman Empire. Even more intriguing is the notion, expressed by a vari-
ety of Italian thinkers, that Hebrew had merit as a language of science
and culture, not merely as a language of scripture.113
Another blind spot in this field is the presumed hegemony of religious
authorities. A generation ago Williams insisted that only theologians
and “church dignitaries” commented on scripture; his assumption was
subsequently reified and has yet to be dethroned.114 This book takes a
close look at five figures – both Jewish and Christian – who, though nei-
ther rabbis, nor theologians, nor priests, undertook serious projects to
study the Bible. Those projects have been ignored, in part because the
Bible was not a sanctioned field of investigation for university-trained
physicians. But that does not mean that only theologians studied or
wrote about it. To a surprising degree, medical men did too. Physicians
are rarely, if ever, seen as important scholars of the Bible. Recent trends
in Renaissance scholarship, of which Deborah Shuger’s work is exem-
plary, argue that the beginnings of biblical scholarship in the Renaissance
may be traced to French legal culture.115 According to this argument the
efforts of jurists like Jacques Cujas to contextualize the late antique law
code of the emperor Justinian developed tools that were used to dissect
the biblical corpus. To understand the nature of biblical studies in early
modern Europe, a history that acknowledges the lasting contributions
of physicians as well as lawyers is needed. Physicians were interested in
113
See Ulisse Aldrovandi, “Quanto essattamente la lingua hebrea esprime la natura delle cose,”
in BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 83 Bibliologia, 444–5. Marco Marini makes a similar point in his
“prefatio ad φιλεβράιον lectorem,” in Arca Noë thesaurus linguae sanctae novus (Venice:
Giovanni di Gara, 1593), sig. *3r; De’ Pomi expressed a similar attitude in his Tsemah￵ David,
preface “alli signori lettori,” unnumbered pages. For a discussion of the latter two sources,
see herein Chapter 3. Fifteenth-century Italians advanced similar arguments, though with
less emphasis on natural philosophy. For example, Poggio Bracciolini, in a letter to Niccolò
Niccoli from the baths in Baden in May 1416, wrote that Hebrew has utility for studia
humanitatis: “confert tamen aliquid ad studia humanitatis.” See Helene Harth, ed., Lettere:
Poggio Bracciolini, vol. 1: Lettere a Niccolò Niccoli (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1984–7), 45.
See also Eugenio Garin, “L’umanesimo italiano e la cultura ebraica,” in Vivanti, Gli ebrei in
Italia, 361–83. For a similar argument about Hebrew scholarship in the Netherlands, see
Theodor Dunkelgrün, “The Hebrew Library of a Renaissance Humanist: Andreas Masius
and the Bibliography to his Iosuae Imperatoris Historia (1574), with a Latin Edition and an
Annotated English Translation,” Studia Rosenthaliana 42–3 (2010–11): 197–252.
114
See Williams, Common Expositor, 10.
115
Shuger, Renaissance Bible, 52.
a wide range of natural objects not only in their role as materia medica
but also as collectibles. That passion for collecting drew their attention
to descriptions of the natural world in the Bible as in other ancient
texts. Although I would like this book to compensate for deficiencies
in Jewish and Renaissance history, my primary objective is differ-
ent. The book attempts to bridge two well-cultivated fields and cre-
ate dialogue where monologue currently prevails. I would be gratified
if Renaissance historians who study natural philosophy and medicine
attended more closely to the writings of sixteenth-century Jewish physi-
cians. Conversely, scholarship on the Jews in Renaissance Europe has
much to gain from a more rigorous engagement with European culture.
This preference for interdisciplinary work is not newfangled; it under-
lies some classic books of Jewish historiography. Umberto Cassuto, in
his magisterial volume on Jews in Renaissance Florence, urged histori-
ans of the Jews to “always have regard for events that unfold and phe-
nomena that manifest themselves in contemporary Italian society.”116 I
have tried to do just that.
Chapter Summary
This is a work of synthetic and interpretive history. Although I focus
on the writings of a select group of individuals, some of whom have
received limited scholarly attention, I have not written a series of intel-
lectual biographies. Rather, this book aspires to write the biography of
an idea – or, more precisely, several ideas. Even though medicine and nat-
ural philosophy are essential to my interpretation, they are not, strictly
speaking, the only areas of learning studied here. The protagonists of my
story cultivated broad interests and lived in a climate where ideas flowed
easily between the realms of philology, history, biblical studies, and natu-
ral philosophy. In fact, Aldrovandi, de’ Pomi, and Portaleone spent their
careers in the space that connects those different fields. In a sense, this
book does too.
The following chapters are structured around the topics that sixteenth-
century Italian natural philosophers wrote about: botany, mineralogy,
116
Umberto Cassuto, Gli ebrei a Firenze nell’eta del rinascimento (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1965
[1918]), vi.
Introduction 31
zoology, and alimentation. However, those topical groupings are merely

taxonomic points of entry into conceptual themes that emerge from close
readings of Aldrovandi’s, Guilandinus’s, de’ Pomi’s, and Portaleone’s
natural philosophic writings. Those themes include the compatibility of
scientific and religious research; the application of the former to the lat-
ter, and vice versa; the deprecation of ancient and medieval authorities
in favor of more recent writings and more diverse sources of knowledge;
and the relevance of biblical medicine in modern times.
Chapters 1 and 2 are case studies in the history of Renaissance tex-
tual scholarship. They mine the writings of physicians who occasion-
ally sallied out into the hills and botanical gardens but who spent the
lion’s share of their time reading books and writing them. Chapter 1 pre
sents commentaries on Dioscorides’ De materia medica, which attempt
to clarify biblical language in contemporary scientific terminology and
to evaluate the hebraica veritas of scripture. The converso physician
Amatus Lusitanus and, later, Andrea Bacci and Ulisse Aldrovandi were
key contributors to this project. While Chapter 1 tells the story of bring-
ing the Bible to life by using science, Chapter 2 is about reviving science
by using the Bible. The chapter shows how Aldrovandi and Melchior
Guilandinus, the prefect of Padua’s revered botanical garden, used the
Bible to adjudicate disputes about the historical veracity and scientific
accuracy of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. It explores how the two
natural philosophers read the Bible as both a historical source and a
religious one. In doing so, they elided some of the differences between
sacred and profane literature and created an example of scholarship that
would irritate church authorities and inspire later biblical critics.
The remaining three chapters shift course. They tell the story of doc-
tors venturing out of their studies and into the world. Chapter 3 intro-
duces a new figure: the Jewish physician David de’ Pomi. It presents
evidence of early modern physicians entering the marketplace rather
than the library in order to understand scripture. And it tells the tale of
a doctor who not only used his scientific expertise to explicate the Bible
but drew on the Bible and its medical traditions to solve contemporary
epidemiological problems. In de’ Pomi’s lexicographical work Tsemah￵
David / Dittionario novo (Venice, 1587), profane science and sacred lit-
erature were co-dependent. That co-dependence signals a strong desire
to relate to the Bible as a text with contemporary relevance.
For Abraham Portaleone, one of David de’ Pomi’s coreligionists and

fellow physicians, the Bible had multifaceted applications as well. In
fact, Portaleone drew on his knowledge of the Hebrew Bible and post-
biblical Jewish traditions to aid him in his medical practice and enrich
his correspondence with non-Jewish colleagues. On the basis of new evi-
dence – Portaleone’s unpublished medical letters – Chapter 4 explores
two themes in sixteenth-century natural philosophy: ancient alimenta-
tion and embryology. It argues that the medical profession in sixteenth-
century northern Italy promoted and facilitated meaningful social and
intellectual contact between Jews and Christians. By analyzing several of
Portaleone’s letters, it considers the nature of Jewish-Christian relations
in the Medical Republic of Letters. Religious texts, rather than serving
as theological proofs, were valuable to this community of learned physi-
cians as confirmations of early modern scientific developments.
The fifth and final chapter studies Abraham Portaleone’s printed
Hebrew encyclopedia of biblical antiquities. The chapter explores how
Portaleone combined bookish erudition with an empirical bent – nur-
tured by information gleaned from Mantua’s pharmacists – in order
to reconstruct a composite ingredient in biblical incense. I argue that
transposing habits of thought characteristic of the medical profession
and the natural philosophic community to the study of religious texts
engendered a highly critical stance toward received tradition, rabbinic
and scientific alike.
Of the cases discussed in this book, the majority comes from places
famously tolerant of their Jewish populations: the Duchy of Mantua and
the Republic of Venice. Jewish-Christian interaction in medical contexts
flourished on the Italian Peninsula in other places as well as in different
periods. For example, in the fifteenth century many Jewish physicians
practiced medicine throughout the Kingdom of Naples: they treated
Christian patients, gained citizenship, and were active in literary and sci-
entific circles.117 Furthermore, Italian settings outside of large cities were
propitious for Jewish physicians.118 For example, a Hebrew manuscript
117
See Nicola Ferorelli, Gli ebrei nell’italia meridionale dall’età romana al secolo XVIII
(Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1980 [orig. 1915]), 116–23, for examples from Barletta, Lecce,
Naples, Salerno, Venosa, and other cities.
118
For Umbria, see Ariel Toaff, Love, Work, and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria, trans.
Judith Landry (Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996), chap. 10. See
Introduction 33
miscellany in Florence’s Biblioteca Laurenziana contains the letters of a

young Jew, Solomon, who practiced medicine in a variety of towns and
hamlets in what is today northern Lazio and southern Tuscany.119 He
was particularly well established in Stimigliano, having been asked by
the local cardinal to live in his court and serve as his private physician.120
Even more detailed evidence survives from midcentury Pitigliano, part
of a fiefdom under the control of the Orsini family, where Niccolò IV
Orsini had as his personal physician the Jew David de Panis.121 However,
rural life, though conducive to Jewish integration, could not create the
extensive professional contacts or provide the institutional support
that facilitated the unique intellectual activity of larger northern cities.
Conversely, while the Aragonese Kingdom of Naples boasted courts and
vibrant urban centers, medical culture in the fifteenth century did not
encourage the form of interdisciplinary research into the natural history
of the biblical world that it would a century later. Between 1545 and
1612 in urban centers such as Venice, Bologna, and Mantua, conditions
were ideal in helping to concoct a special mixture of biblical and medi-
cal studies.
My story ends in 1612 with the publication of Portaleone’s encyclo-
pedia. It does so for several reasons. For one thing, Shiltei HaGibborim
marks the culmination of a half century of studying the Bible from a
natural philosophical perspective – both within Jewish circles and in
Italian culture more broadly. That approach to the Bible evolved from
straightforward philological analysis to creative reconstruction of
also the sources gathered by Toaff in his The Jews in Umbria, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1993).
A few medical contracts between Jews and Christians survive, some extremely detailed. For
fifteenth-century Pisa, see Michele Luzzati, “Il medico ebreo e il contadino: un documento
pisano del 1462,” La Rassegna mensile di Israel 45 (1979): 385–92.
119
Biblioteca Laurenziana pluteus 88,12: 21r–63r. Some of these letters have been published in
Yaakov Boksenboim, Iggrot Yehudei Italya (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1994). The
letters are briefly mentioned in Natascia Danieli, “Sull’epistolografia ebraica in Italia nei
secoli XVI–XVIII,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, serie orientale 42:3 (2003): 29–56, 44.
120
The cardinal, though not named explicitly, was Franciotto Orsini. Solomon declined the
invitation, citing, in a letter to his former teacher, the predicted diminution of his business, a
great part of which depended on peasant clients. See Biblioteca Laurenziana pluteus 88,12,
58r. This letter is reproduced in Boksenboim, Iggrot Yehudei Italya, 56–7. For information
on the Orsini family, see Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri italiane, 11 vols. (Milan: presso
l’autore, 1819–85), 9: tav. 113–18.
121
Giuseppe Celata, “Gli ebrei in una società rurale e feudale: Pitigliano nella seconda metà
del Cinquecento,” Archivio storico italiano 138 (1980): 197–255, 210. In sixteenth-century
Pitigliano, Jews were also permitted to own land. See p. 241.
biblical products. In a way, little remained to be done after scholars

began to build models of the biblical stories;122 the ideas set in motion
in the mid-sixteenth century had run their course and reached their fru-
ition. Furthermore, to seventeenth-century scholars throughout Europe,
excessive hands-on experimentation with religious texts could weaken
faith in miracles.123 Additionally, the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies witnessed the institutional and intellectual isolation of natural
philosophy from medicine.124 Around the same time, theology faculties
moved from their place at the periphery of Italian intellectual society –
Jesuit schools – to the center, universities.125 Biblical scholars retreated
into the protective confines of university theology faculties, and once
there their writings disengaged from other disciplines and became more
specialized.126 Physicians, in turn, narrowed their range of inquiry and
ceased to study the Bible seriously.127 For a fleeting moment at the end of
the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, medical doctors
had the knowledge, the desire, and the professional flexibility to study
both nature and scripture.
Other factors contributed to the extinguishing of this movement in
the first third of the seventeenth century. Demographic and political
realities in the 1620s and 1630s halted the bilateral Jewish-Christian
effort to integrate biblical studies and natural philosophy. The ambitious
Duke Carlo Emanuele I of Piedmont Savoy, in annexing the Marquisat
of Saluzzo, a French enclave on the Italian side of the Alps, provoked
122
For a later parallel, consider Jacob Judah Aryeh Leon’s (Judah del Templo’s) model of
Solomon’s temple, which he designed and assembled in mid-seventeenth-century Amsterdam.
See A. Offenberg, “Bibliography of the Works of Jacob Jehudah Leon (Templo),” Studia
Rosenthaliana 12:1–2 (1978): 111–32; Offenberg, “Dirk van Santen and the Keur Bible:
New Insights into Jacob Judah (Arye) Leon Templo’s Model Temple,” Studia Rosenthaliana
37 (2004): 401–22.
123
See, for example, Thomas Browne, Religio medici (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1906 [orig.
1643]), 23–24. On Browne and the Bible, see Kevin Killeen, Biblical Scholarship, Science
and Politics in Early Modern England: Thomas Browne and the Thorny Place of Knowledge
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009).
124
Ogilvie, Science of Describing.
125
Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, chap. 10.
126
François Laplanche, L’écriture, le sacré et l’histoire: érudits et politiques protestants devant
la Bible en France au XVIIe siècle (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press, 1986).
127
On scientific culture in the seventeenth century, see Christoph Lüthy, “What to Do
with Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy? A Taxonomic Problem,” Perspectives on
Science 8.2 (2000): 164–95.
Introduction 35
a destabilizing war with France. Carlo Emanuele also laid claim to

Monferatto and machinated to bring all of the Mantovano under his
control. Those actions led to numerous skirmishes with Spanish and
Austrian forces and eventually all-out war in the region.128 A devastat-
ing plague in 1630, whose ill effects extended to Venice and claimed the
life of the Venetian rabbi Leon Modena’s son-in-law, further ravaged the
northern part of the peninsula and sapped the energies of Italian intel-
lectuals. Finally, the fall of Mantua to Austrian invaders, followed by the
temporary displacement of Mantua’s Jewish community, badly damaged
the delicate conditions in which figures like Portaleone, Cavallara, and
Magno could pursue their related researches.129
The Natural Philosophy of the Biblical World does not present a grand
narrative of intellectual change. Instead, it explains how the adherents
of one learned tradition shed light on another. As Amos Funkenstein
observed, true novelty often consists “not in the invention of new cat-
egories or new figures of thought, but rather in a surprising employ-
ment of existing ones.”130 Similarly, as Salo Baron pointed out, Azariah
de’ Rossi’s contribution to intellectual history does not lie in the orig-
inality of his thought or method but rather in his synthesis of diverse
sources and his application of those sources’ methods to different his-
torical problems.131 The same may be said of the physicians and natu-
ralists examined here: by applying methods of natural philosophy to a
reenergized scrutiny of the Bible, sixteenth-century Italian scholars drew
on the creative energies and novel methods of their profession to change
the way the Bible was studied.
Although Aldrovandi, de’ Pomi, and Portaleone may have inadver-
tently passed on their methods to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
scholars who labored to dethrone the Bible from its exalted position atop
the Western canon, their original goals were pious. To the extent that
128
Domenico Sella, Italy in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Longman, 1997), 3–4.
129
For a Jewish perspective on the fall of Mantua, see Catalano, Olam Hafukh. On the looting
of art in Mantua, see Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Plunder of the Arts in the Seventeenth
Century (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), 27–36.
130
Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the
Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 14.
131
Salo Baron, “Azariah de’ Rossi’s Historical Method,” in History and Jewish Historians:
Essays and Addresses (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1964), 205–39,
225–6.
they wished to revise scriptural translations or create new a pplications

for the Bible, they did so to deepen their devotion, not to nurture their
skepticism. Although I suggest that the body of work this book presents
had an afterlife in later centuries,132 the project’s primary goal is to nar-
rate the history of a symbiosis between natural philosophy and scrip-
tural study. Strictly speaking, the creative combination of medical and
religious learning that characterized the lives of a conspicuous group of
naturalists in late Renaissance Italy did not survive the tumultuous end
of the first third of the seventeenth century; it died. The pages before
you attempt an autopsy. But, as the emphasis of this book makes plain,
the details of this phenomenon’s life teach us more than the causes of its
death do.
Later biblical criticism – including the high criticism of the nineteenth
century – depended on critical distance between biblical history and the
present day. In the works of Ulisse Aldrovandi, David de’ Pomi, and
Abraham Portaleone, that distance was collapsed. In different ways all
three wanted to project themselves back into the world of the Bible; or,
perhaps more accurately, wished to transport the Bible into their every-
day lives. Their efforts constitute a lost chapter of Jewish and Renaissance
history, and this book endeavors to reconstruct that history.
132
Portaleone had readers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See, for example, Blasio
Ugolini, Thesaurus antiquitatum sacrarum, 34 vols. (Venice: J. G. Herthz, 1744–69), 11:
cclvij to dxlviij and herein Chapter 1. David de’ Pomi’s dictionary was one of the seven
that Edmund Castell relied on. See his Lexicon Heptaglotton hebraicum, chaldaicum, syria-
cum, samaritanum, aethiopicum, arabicum (London: Thomos Roycroft, 1669), sig. b2r. De’
Pomi is also a consistent presence in Samuel Bochart’s Hierozoicon sive bipertitum opus de
animalibus s. scripturae cuius pars prior libris IV (Frankfurt: Balthasar Christoph Wüsten,
1675).
1
“This Is What King David Meant”
Amatus Lusitanus and Ulisse Aldrovandi

on the Natural Science of Scripture
During the second half of the sixteenth century, when religious authorities
wanted to understand the natural world of the Bible, they sometimes
asked medical doctors to help them. Few physicians were as besieged by
requests for help as Ulisse Aldrovandi, a professor of natural philosophy
at the University of Bologna.1 In particular, various members of the influ-
ential Paleotti family who held powerful positions in the church solicited
information from Aldrovandi about the natural world they encountered
in the Bible.2 On 17 February 1577, for example, Aldrovandi reported
that Alfonso Paleotti, a local priest, had asked him the previous eve-
ning to write a history of the nine gemstones mentioned in chapter 28
of Ezekiel. Aldrovandi obliged, but not without noting that if he were
to do this thoroughly, “the book would swell into a massive volume.”3
1
In 1561 Aldrovandi assumed the chair he would occupy until his death: Lectura philoso-
phiae naturalis ordinaria de fossilibus, plantis et animalibus (professor ordinarius of natural
philosophy in fossils, plants, and animals). On Aldrovandi, see Paula Findlen, Possessing
Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994); on the naturalist’s unpublished writings, see Lodovico
Frati, Catalogo dei manoscritti di Ulisse Aldrovandi (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1907); and,
more recently, Maria Cristina Bacchi, “Ulisse Aldrovandi e i suoi libri,” L’Archiginassio 100
(2005): 255–366.
2
On the Paleotti family in sixteenth-century Bologna, see Paolo Prodi, Il Cardinale Gabriele
Paleotti (1522–1597), 2 vols. (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1959).
3
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 91, “Ulyssis Aldrovandi Historia novem gemmarum de quibus fit men-
tio in Ezechiele (cap. 28). Reverendissimo ac summa religione praedito Excellentissimoque
jurisconsulto D. Alphonso Palaeoto S. Petri Ecclesiae Cardinalis Canonico Prestantissimo,
Ulysses Aldrovandus philosophus et medicus s.p.d.,” 383r–409r. “Cum a me, Reverende
Alphonse, superioribus diebus petieris, ut illarum novem gemmarum, de quibus meminit
Ezechiel cap 28, historiam omnem ac facultatem breviter enodarem, non potui non tibi
morem gerere . . . quam quidem [historiam] si uno fasce totam comprehendere vellem, mihi
37
Even so, he took up his pen to address the topic the very next day. Eight
years later Alfonso’s brother Gabriele, a cardinal and the archbishop of
Bologna, would press Aldrovandi further on the issue of nature in the
Bible:
When September drew to a close I made my way to Croara, to see the most
illustrious and revered Cardinal Paleotti, having been summoned there by
him for a few days of recreation. . . . During lunch we took up conversation
of various matters, and by good fortune we fell upon the passage in book
2 of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, where he argues that it was neces-
sary for some Christian to undertake the task of interpreting the Old and
New Testaments when they speak about plants, stones and metals, herbs
and trees, animals and other things that pertain to geography, since in them
there are many difficult passages. Impelled by that authority, the illustrious
Cardinal tried by many means to persuade me.4
Understanding the natural world of the Bible and demonstrating its rel-
evance was a serious intellectual challenge, one Aldrovandi deemed an
“immense labor, arduously placed on my shoulders.”5 In spite of the task’s
difficulty, Aldrovandi explained, Saint Augustine thought it essential.6
For Augustine, it was a Christian duty to be expert in knowledge of
crede, in magnum volumen excresceret,” 383v. Dated (409r) “Bononiae 13 kal. Martii
MDLXXVII.”
4
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 54, Theatrum biblicum naturale (2 vols.): 1:5v–6r: “Cum mense sep-
tembri elapso me contulissem ad Crovariam montem ad Illustrissimum et Reverendissimum
cardinalem Paleottum, cum ab eo accersitus essem ibique per aliquot dies recreationis causa
cum Amplitudine eius moram traxissem et cum a prandio in varios incidissemus sermones,
forte fortuna incidimus in locum D. Augustini lib. 2 De doctrina christiana, ubi persuadet
necesse fore Christianum aliquem suscipere laborem interpretandi in ea parte Testamenti
Veteris atque Novi, in qua sermo habetur de plantis, nempe de lapidibus atque metallis, her-
bis atque arboribus, animalibus et aliis, quae ad ipsam geographiam spectant, cum multae
difficultates in eis sint. Unde hac authoritate impulsus Illustrissimus Cardinalis multis ratio-
nibus conatus est mihi persuadere, praesente etiam D. Antonio Gigante Forosemproniensi
viro undequaque doctissimo, ego autem aperte cognoscens hoc onus impar esse humeris
meis excusavi me ab hoc labore, sed tandem ab Illustrissimo convictus non potui nisi morem
gerere Amplitudini suae.” A portion of this passage is quoted in Prodi, Il Cardinale Gabriele
Paleotti 2:543 n. 56. On villeggiatura and Bolognese culture at this time, see Nadja Asksamija,
“Architecture and Poetry in the Making of a Christian Cicero: Giovanni Battista Campeggi’s
Tuscolano and the Literary Culture of the Villa in Counter-Reformation Bologna,” I Tatti
Studies 13 (2010): 127–91.
5
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 54, Theatrum biblicum naturale, 1:2r. “hunc laborem licet immensum . . .
arduum humeris meis imponere.”
6
Aldrovandi makes this point at various places in his writings. See, for example, his letter to
the (unnamed) protettore of the Collegio di Spagna, in BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 66, 355r–367r,
“This Is What King David Meant” 39
natural things such as “the places of the earth, animals, herbs, and trees,
unknown stones and metals, and other things mentioned in the Holy
Scripture.”7 Aldrovandi described how Paleotti would “admonish, even
exhort me to take up this task as my vocation, as my very own profes-
sion.”8 Paleotti prevailed: Aldrovandi, who attained worldwide fame for
his extensive collection of natural objects, his far-reaching correspon-
dence, and his learned writings on all branches of natural philosophy,
would go on to scrutinize the Bible as a scientific text. He did so not only
in his unpublished two-volume Theatrum biblicum naturale (Natural
theater of the Bible) but also in many other works.9
Amatus Lusitanus: Medical Commentary and the Bible

A generation before Ulisse Aldrovandi began to explicate the role of
nature in the Bible, a work of medical science appeared that greatly
influenced him. In 1553 Amatus published at Venice a commentary
on an ancient Greek medical text: Dioscorides’ first-century De mate-
ria medica.10 Like Aldrovandi, Amatus integrated biblical commentary
into his medical work. Numerous later sixteenth-century scholars with
medical backgrounds who wrote about the Bible would do the same;
esp. 362v: “come dice santo Augustino nel secondo libro della dottrina Christiana al
Capitolo 16 dove prova la cognitione delli Animali, Pietre, Herbe esser molto necessaria al
Christiano.” See also BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 54, Theatrum biblicum naturale, 1:1r–1v.
7
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 54, Theatrum biblicum naturale, 1:1v. For the relevant passages of
Saint Augustine, see PL 34:46–9.
8
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 54, 1:1r–1v: “Quapropter res naturales in sacris Bibliis commemora-
tas alacri spiritu interpretandas suscepi, tum quod D. Augustini verbis in libro de Doctrina
Christiana ad huiusmodi munus excipiendum excitarer – ubi Christiani viri in rerum cogni-
tione versati officium fore innuit quoscunque terrarum locos quaeque animalia vel herbas
atque arbores sive lapides vel metalla incognita, alias species commemorat Sacra Scriptura
generatim digerere solaque exposita literis mandare – tum etiam quod Illustrissimus et
Reverendissimus Cardinalis Paleotus saepius me admonuit exhortatque, ut huiusmodi pro-
vinciam susciperem tamquam vocationi meae professionique propriam.”
9
Findlen, Possessing Nature, 66–7; Giuseppe Olmi and Paolo Prodi, “Art, Science, and
Nature in Bologna c. 1600,” in The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1986),
213–36, 224–5; Bacchi, “Ulisse Aldrovandi e i suoi libri,” 345. Although Findlen has noted
Aldrovandi’s interest in biblical studies, she has not explored his study of natural philosophy
in the Bible in detail. Additionally, there are scattered mentions of Aldrovandi’s interest in
the Bible in Frati, Catalogo dei manoscritti.
10
Amatus Lusitanus, In Dioscorides Anazarbei de materia medica libros quinque enarrationes
eruditissimae Amati Lusitani (Lyon: apud viduam Balthazari Arnoletti, 1558).
there were earlier exponents of this trend, too.11 Amatus, however, was
perhaps the first to fuse analysis of the Bible and natural philosophy in
a medical treatise.
Amatus was a Portuguese physician born in 1511 to New Christian
parents in Castelo Branco and baptized as João Rodrigues.12 He was edu-
cated at the University of Salamanca, where in 1530 he took his degree
in medicine and philosophy. In the sixteenth century, Spanish medical
faculties, like Italian ones, offered their students broad training in the
studia humanitatis and classical philology. Amatus put that training to
good use: in addition to his medical writings, he also translated classical
Latin texts into Castilian.13 Spanish medical faculties also emphasized
hands-on training in practical medicine.14 In or around 1530, Amatus
took his medical degree and, after a brief interlude in Portugal, accepted
an offer in 1533 to practice medicine in Antwerp – a haven for conversos
and Jews alike.15 Even though Amatus was born in Portugal, educated in
Spain, employed briefly in the Low Countries, and died in the Ottoman
Empire, his professional life took wing in Italy, and he spent his most
11
See, for example, Abraham Farissol’s commentary on Job, Perush al Iyov, published in the
first edition of the Biblia Rabbinica (Venice: Bomberg, 1518). It was also published in the
second edition (Venice: Bomberg, 1524–5).
12
Maximiano Lemos, Amato Lusitano: a sua vida e a sua obra (Porto: Eduardo Tavares
Martins, 1907); Harry Friedenwald, The Jews and Medicine, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1944), 1:332–80. On Amatus’s curationes especially, see Gianna
Pomata, “Sharing Cases: The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine,” Early Science and
Medicine 15 (2010): 193–236, 206–15.
13
See Eleazar Gutwirth, “Amatus Lusitanus and the Location of Sixteenth-Century Cultures,”
in David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri, eds., Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals
in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 216–34, 219.
14
For general information on the University of Salamanca, see Manuel Fernández Álvarez, ed.,
La Universidad de Salamanca, 3 vols. (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1989). On the
breadth and diversity of contemporary medical education, see Luis S. Granjel, “Los estudios
de medicina,” in ibid., II: Átmósfera intelectual y perspectivas de investigación, 97–117. On
the importance of training in classical languages, see Andrés Gallego Barnés, “Humanidades
renacentistas,” in ibid., 211–35. For humanism in sixteenth-century Spanish universities,
especially Salamanca, see Katherine Elliot Van Liere, “Humanism and Scholasticism in
the Sixteenth-Century Academy,” Renaissance Quarterly 53:1 (2000): 57–84; Richard L.
Kagan, “Universities in Castile 1500–1700,” Past and Present 49 (1970): 44–71. For a stu-
dent’s (rather melancholy) perspective on life at Salamanca in the sixteenth century, see
Luis E. Rodríguez-San Pedro Bezares, Vida, aspiraciones, y fracasos de un estudiante de
Salamanca: el diario de Gaspar Ramos Ortiz, 1568–9 (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad
de Salamanca, 1987).
15
Jonathan I. Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime
Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 14–16.
productive years on the Italian Peninsula. In 1540 Amatus was invited

to Ferrara by Duke Ercole II to lecture at the University of Ferrara in
medicine; he remained in that position until 1547.16 From 1547 to 1555
Amatus lived and worked in Ancona, while spending brief interludes in
Rome between 1550 and 1555, having been summoned there to treat
Pope Julius III. Amatus proudly recounts one such visit in the third vol-
ume of his medical case studies.17 In fact, Amatus saw several volumes
of his medical case studies into print at Venice. Later in life Amatus emi-
grated to Salonika, where he died in 1568.18
Writing about the Bible, or saying unflattering things about the church
and its dependents, could get sixteenth-century writers into serious trou-
ble. Amatus was no exception. In fact, according to two accomplished
scholars of the Inquisition, only Girolamo Cardano and Leonhart Fuchs
exceeded Amatus as medical authors whose works were most frequently
targeted for censorship by church authorities.19 In the Spanish Indexes of
1583 and 1584, Amatus’s work was to be corrected; in the Roman Indexes
16
On the University of Ferrara in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Paul Grendler, The
Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002),
102, 347; on Jewish medical students in Ferrara, see Adriano Franceschini, “Privilegi dotto-
rali concessi ad ebrei a Ferrara nel sec. XVI,” Atti e memorie della Deputazione provinciale
ferrarese di storia patria 3:19 (1975): 163–95.
17
See his letter “illustrissimo et sapientissimo viro, domino D. Alphonso Alencastrensi,
supremo apud Lusitanos Commendatario, Amatus Lusitanus medicus, felicitatem et perpe-
tuam salutam optat,” published between centuriae two and three in Curationum medicina-
lium Amati Lusitani medici physici praestantissimi tomus primus continens centurias quator
(Venice: apud Balthesarem Constantinum, 1557), 340. The letter is dated “Anconae Idibus
Aprilis Millesimi Quingentesimi Quinquagesimi quarti,” or 13 April 1554. Ibid., 342 [sic:
341]. Alphonso Alencastrensi, or Alphonso of Lancaster, was a friend of Amatus with whom
he lodged in Rome. See Paul Rieger and Hermann Vogelstein, Geschichte der Juden in Rom
(Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1895), 2:257.
18
Older bibliography on Amatus is listed in David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and
Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995),
307 n. 113. Also see Eleazar Gutwirth, “Jewish Bodies and Renaissance Melancholy:
Culture and the City in Italy and the Ottoman Empire,” in Maria Diemling and Giuseppe
Veltri, eds., The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and
Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 57–92; Giuseppe Veltri, “Jüdische Einstellung
zu den Wissenschaften im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert: Das Prinzip der praktisch-empirischen
Anwendbarkeit,” in Gerd Biegel and Michael Graetz, eds., Judentum zwischen Tradition
und Moderne (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2002), 149–59; Veltri, “Il lector
prudens e la biblioteca della sapienza antica: Pietro Colonna Galatino, Amato Lusitano e
Azaria de’ Rossi,” in Giancarlo Lacerenza, ed., Hebraica hereditas: studi in onore di Cesare
Colafemmina (Naples: Università degli studi di Napoli “L’Orientale,” 2005), 369–86.
19
Ugo Baldini and Leen Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science: Documents from the
Archives of the Roman Congregations of the Holy Office and the Index, 4 vols., in Fontes
of 1590, 1593, and 1596, his work was to be expurgated. The Portuguese
Index was the most stern: in 1581 his medical writings were prohibited
outright.20 The most offensive portions of Amatus’s oeuvre were not those
in which he commented on the Bible or emended the Vulgate’s translation;
they were those in which he described Catholics in disrespectful language
or wrote about them in compromising medical situations.21 Though his
work on Dioscorides was not considered to be threatening, it did contain
critical remarks about the accuracy of the Vulgate.
But the portions of Amatus’s medical writings that seriously engaged
biblically literate naturalists later in the sixteenth century had little to do
with anti-Catholic sentiment; they concerned scriptural descriptions of
nature. For example, the sixty-sixth enarratio, or exposition, of Amatus’s
commentary on Dioscorides examines stacte, otherwise known to
Renaissance readers by its Latin names gutta and pinguissimus flos myr-
rhae. Amatus’s analysis of this natural product afforded him the chance
to show off his botanical expertise, demonstrate his linguistic facility, and
challenge one of the early sixteenth century’s most celebrated Christian
Hebraists: Sebastian Münster.22 The impression Amatus strove to create
was that Münster was unqualified to analyze scriptural botany; only a
naturalist could accurately read and appropriately render scientific lan-
guage in the Bible. Skilled as both a Hebraist and a naturalist, Amatus
used his knowledge of natural science to correct a common reading of
the Bible.
Amatus directed his critical acumen at Jerome’s Vulgate translation
of the Bible, a frequent object of criticism in sixteenth-century Italian
culture, both Jewish and Christian.23 Amatus pointed out that “many
archivi sancti officii romani series documentorum archivi Congregationis pro Doctrina Fidei.
Vol. 1:1, Sixteenth-Century Documents (Rome: Libreria editrice vaticana, 2009), 744.
20
Ibid., 744–68.
21
An example is provided later in this chapter. See the section “The Vulgate Bible in the
Sixteenth Century.”
22
For older bibliography on Münster, see Karl Heinz Burmeister, Sebastian Münster: eine
Bibliographie mit 22 Abhandlungen (Weisbaden: G. Pressler, 1964). On Münster as a
Hebraist, see Stephen G. Burnett, “Reassessing the ‘Basel-Wittenberg Conflict’: Dimensions
of the Reformation-Era Discussion of Hebrew Scholarship,” in Alison Coudert and Jeffrey
Shoulson, eds., Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early
Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 181–201.
23
See Eugene Rice Jr., St. Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1985), 115–76. Profiat Duran, Abraham Farissol, Abraham Portaleone, and others all
think that the psalmist indeed called [the spice] in Psalm 44 [45:8–9]
gutta or ‘tear,’ as the verse reads: ‘Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed
thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows, all thy garments smell of
myrrh, and aloes, and cassia.’”24 Showing his knowledge of the Hebrew
scriptures as well as his botanical expertise, Amatus protests that “the
truth is that the Davidic text does not have it as such, as the true Hebrew
shows.”25 Amatus’s commentary then presents the Hebrew words of the
psalm in question. It is one of only two appearances of Hebrew charac-
ters in Amatus’s printed oeuvre.26
But Amatus was not content merely to criticize an ancient work; he also
took on a contemporary analysis by the renowned Hebraist Sebastian
Münster. Amatus’s first words about Münster were favorable: he lauded
him as “a most learned man of our time, extremely skilled in many lan-
guages,” and then cited Münster’s version of Psalm 45:9, which ren-
ders the three spices in question as “myrrh, aloe, and keiam.” Münster’s
translation of mor as “myrrh” remained faithful to the Vulgate, but he
replaced gutta with “aloe” and cassia with “keiam.”27 As such, Münster’s
translation presented Amatus the opportunity to criticize the Vulgate
alongside Münster. Since Jerome had a full command of Hebrew and
Greek and was widely respected in the Renaissance, Amatus criticized
the Vulgate while suggesting that Jerome was not responsible for it.
did the same. For Duran, see Kelimat HaGoyim, chap. 12; for Farissol, see Magen Avraham,
chap. 29; for Portaleone, see SG, 87v.
24
Amatus Lusitanus, De materia medica, book I, enarratio 66, p. 91. “Apud vero Psalmistam,
ut multi putant, psalmo 44 gutta, sive lachrima nominatur, quum legitur: ‘propterea unxit te
deus, Deus tuus oleo laetitiae, prae consortibus tuis, myrrha et gutta et casia.’”
25
Ibid., 91–2: “At re vera textus Davidicus non ita habet, ut Hebraica veritas indicat, quae sic
habet: ‫ מור ואהלות קציעות כל בגדתיך‬:‫אהבת צדק ותשנא רשע על כן משחך אלהים אלהיך שמן ששון מחבריך‬
26
I have not had the opportunity to examine Amatus’s autograph manuscript of this text,
held in Lisbon’s Biblioteca nacional de Portugal. The other instance of Hebrew characters
appearing in Amatus’s work is when he is examining several contradictory translations of
Avicenna; he quotes an Arabic version of the text in Hebrew characters to show that Jacob
Mantino’s translation is the most accurate. See Amatus Lusitanus, Curationum medicina-
lium centuria sexta (Venice: apud Vincentium Valgrisium, 1556), curatio 53, p. 94.
27
Amatus Lusitanus, De materia medica, book I, enarratio 66, p. 92: “Quae ita ad verbum
Munsterus Germanus, vir hac nostra aetate doctissimus et linguarum multarum peritissi-
mus, vertit psalmo 45 sponsis dicato dicens: ‘dilexisti iustitiam et odisti impietatem, prop-
terea unxit te deus, deus tuus, oleo laetitiae prae consortibus: myrrham, aloen, et keiam
(redolent) omnia vestimenta tua.’ Hactenus Munsteri interpretatio.” Amatus’s source was
most likely Münster’s ‫ אצר ישע‬Veteris Instrumenti tomus secundus, prophetarum oracula
atque Hagiographa continens (Basel: Michel Isengrin and Heinrich Petri, 1535), 590v.
“That inept imitator,” Amatus interjected, “who was not really Jerome,
whoever he was, had gutta for ahalod . . . the word itself clearly indicates
aloe wood.”28 The Vulgate Bible that sixteenth-century readers were
using was beset by two problems: some translations were infelicitous,
or even inaccurate, and scholars could not be sure that the text truly
represented Jerome’s efforts.
But Amatus also criticized his contemporary Münster. About the
German scholar Amatus lamented that “he translated ahalod with aloe,
but the truth of the matter is that he should have translated it as lig-
num aloes, and not aloe.”29 Amatus’s comment indicates that Münster’s
botanical expertise, as well as his knowledge of Hebrew, was limited
since he omitted the important correction aloe wood from the transla-
tion. Showing his talent for both biblical exegesis and botanical iden-
tification, Amatus pointed out that “aloe is a type of sap, which the
Hebrews call in their language aloe. Ahalot, on the other hand, is aloe
wood. As such, Münster would have been more correct to say ‘myrrh,
aloe wood, and keza.’”30
In the final tally, Amatus criticized not only the Latin Vulgate but
also Sebastian Münster. The renowned Christian Hebraist, accord-
ing to Amatus, was correct when he translated ahalot as aloe rather
than accepting the Vulgate’s rendering of gutta. Still, Amatus castigated
Münster for neglecting to call ahalot aloe wood as opposed to simply
aloe. More forcefully criticizing Münster, Amatus prefers the Vulgate’s
rendering of ‫ קציעות‬as cassia, as opposed to Münster’s unaltered trans-
literation. Amatus’s learned glosses on this verse in Psalm 45 create the
impression that Amatus saw within himself the ideal marriage of skill as
a Hebraist with proficiency in botany. Amatus was accustomed to analyz-
ing classical Greek texts and considering all possible Latin translations
28
Amatus Lusitanus, De materia medica, book I, enarratio 66, p. 92: “In qua mea sententia
optime verbum ‘redolent’ suplet, et ex ea satis constat, quam inepte personatus ille et non
vere Hieronymus, quisque ille fuerit, guttam pro ahalod, interpretatus fuerit, quum vox ipsa
clamet ahalod agallochum Graecorum esse, Romanorum vero lignum aloes.”
29
Ibid., 92: “unde Munsterus emendandus a me quoque venit, quum verbum aholod, aloen
verterit, cum re vera lignum aloes, et non aloen dicere debuisset.”
30
Ibid., 92: “nam aloe succus herbae est, quem Hebraei sua voce Aloe appellant, ahaloth vero
lignum Aloes est, quamobrem Munsterus rectius sic interpretaretur, dicendo: ‘Myrrham,
lignum aloes et keizam (redolent) omnia vestimenta tua.’”
of them – his medical training conditioned him to do that.31 What is

surprising in this passage is that Amatus did the same for a Hebrew text
from the Bible. Because of his unique skill set, Amatus viewed his own
glosses on the Psalms as more faithful than Jerome’s or Münster’s.
The context of Amatus’s remarks about the accuracy of the Vulgate,
the competence of contemporary Christian scholars of Hebrew, and
the usefulness of natural philosophy in explicating the Bible is of par-
amount importance. Amatus embedded his observations in a collection
of detailed essays on a major classical author, Dioscorides. Generally
speaking, Renaissance commentaries on classical texts – literary, phil-
osophical, or scientific – offered their authors the opportunity to dis-
play their extensive erudition. From childhood on, pupils who received
strong Latinate educations were accustomed to a method of instruction
in which teachers proceeded slowly through canonical authors such as
Virgil and Horace and took each phrase, and sometimes each word, as
stimulus for digression and expansive analysis that drew upon a wide
array of other ancient texts.32 The Bible was one of those texts. Medical
works were just as likely to encourage wide-ranging discourses as liter-
ary or philosophical ones. As such, reflections on the Bible occasionally
found their way into scientific commentaries. The character of medi-
cal commentary in the middle years of the sixteenth century, and espe-
cially the state of scholarship on Dioscorides, explains the motives for
Amatus’s creative associations.
By the middle of the sixteenth century, most major medical and sci-
entific texts such as those of Galen, Hippocrates, Theophrastus, and
Dioscorides had been established in bilingual Greek and Latin editions.33
In some cases, vernacular translations existed for these texts. In the years
after 1530, by which time many classical medical texts were available
in Greek and Latin, the challenge for European scholars shifted from
31
Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, 243–4, 352.
32
Kristine Louise Haugen, “A French Jesuit’s Lectures on Vergil, 1582–1583: Jacques Sirmond
between Literature, History and Myth,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30:4 (1999): 967–85;
Anthony Grafton, “On the Scholarship of Politian and Its Context,” Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977): 150–88.
33
Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, 325. See also the articles in Paul Oskar
Kristeller, ed., Catalogus commentariorum et translationum: Medieval and Renaissance
Latin Translations and Commentaries (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 1960–).
establishing accurate editions and readable, faithful translations. Their

mission, instead, was to flesh out cryptic statements, expand truncated
descriptions, and make the text of these canonical authors more relevant
to modern-day medical life.34
This was especially the case for Dioscorides. A survey of scholarship
on his De materia medica is illustrative of broader trends in sixteenth-
century medical humanism. Dioscorides’ first-century work had sur-
vived in Greek throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Because of its
comprehensive nature and its medical utility, manuscripts circulated
widely. Occasionally, these manuscripts presented opportunities for
illustrators and patrons to display, respectively, their diligence and their
largess. One conspicuous example is the so-called Vienna Dioscorides,
an illustrated codex from 512 that was originally a wedding gift for
Anicia Juliana, daughter of the emperor Flavius Olybrius.35 This par-
ticular manuscript was a magnet for multilingual glosses; scribes have
affixed Arabic equivalents to nearly all of the plant names, and a medi-
eval Greek hand elaborates on the names, etymologies, and descriptions
of the plants. Curiously, a Byzantine scribe has translated each of the
plant names into Hebrew in a minuscule, careful script. This polyglossia
came to be associated with Dioscorides in particular and adumbrated
the later fascination with polylingual appellations that is so characteris-
tic of the Renaissance.
In the Latin West, a partial translation of De materia medica was
available from the sixth century onward. In spite of this, Dioscorides’
text was little used. Around 1085 Constantinus Africanus revised this
translation, and the text, as a result, achieved a marginally broader circu-
lation. Still, Dioscorides languished in obscurity until Ermolao Barbaro
completed a new translation in 1481; however, it was not published
until 1516. At the same time, Greek editions of Dioscorides were being
printed in the Western world, chiefly in Italy. Aldus Manutius put out the
first Greek edition in 1499, and that text was revised by Girolamo Rossi
and Francesco Torresani and printed, again by Aldus, in 1518. Still, these
editions were not useful to practicing physicians and active botanical
34
Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, 352.
35
Vienna Nationalbibliothek Ms. med. gr. 1. For a modern reprint, see Der Wiener
Dioskurides: Codex medicus graecus 1 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, 2 vols.
(Graz: Akademische Druck u. Verlagsanstalt, 1998–9).
scholars. As an expert on sixteenth-century medical humanism put it,

scholars like Ermolao Barbaro and Marcello Vergilio were “more adept
at philological subtleties than botany, and more willing to enter into
polemics than into the fields in search of plants.”36 While early transla-
tors and commentators interpreted Dioscorides literally – their profes-
sional orientation was philological and their stated aim was to defend
Dioscorides’ accuracy – later scholars such as Franciscus Frigimelica and
Benedictus Textor, and eventually Otto Brunfels, Valerius Cordus, and
Conrad Gesner, were more concerned with the botanical application
of Dioscorides’ text. The proliferation of vernacular translations of his
work is a good sign of Dioscorides’ popularity by midcentury. Seventy-
eight editions of Piero Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on Dioscorides –
the most read scientific book in the sixteenth century, according to one
expert – were published in the second half of the sixteenth century, in
both Italian and Latin.37 Similarly, the Spanish physician Andreas Laguna
published four editions of his work on Dioscorides in Castilian between
1563 and 1586 alone.38
Once Dioscorides’ work had been established in reliable editions,
scholars shifted their focus away from philological debate and toward
different sorts of applications. Botanical gardens were proliferating
throughout northern Italy just as Dioscorides was becoming more pop-
ular. The text and the novel gardens had a reciprocal impact on one
another: Dioscorides was consulted to identify new plants in Italian gar-
dens, and pharmacists, botanists, and physicians cultivated and circu-
lated plants thought to be the equivalents of items in Dioscorides’ De
36
Jerry Stannard, “P. A. Mattioli: Sixteenth-Century Commentator on Dioscorides,” University
of Kansas Library Bibliographic Contributions 1 (1969): 59–81, 67. Also see Sara Ferri, ed.,
Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Siena 1501–Trento 1578: La vita, le opere (Ponte San Giovanni:
Quattroemme, 1997).
37
Paula Findlen, “The Formation of a Scientific Community: Natural History in Sixteenth-
Century Italy,” in Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, eds., Natural Particulars: Nature
and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 373–4. I
have used Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi di M. Pietro Andrea Matthioli nelli sei libri di
Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo della materia medicinale (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1568).
On Mattioli, see Ferri, Pietro Andrea Mattioli; Brian Ogilvie, The Science of Describing:
Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Karen
Meier Reeds, “Renaissance Humanism and Botany,” Annals of Science 33 (1976): 522–7;
Reeds, Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York: Garland, 1991).
38
Andrés de Lagunas, Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo, acerca de la materia medicinal y de los
venenos mortiferos (Salamanca: Mathias Gast, 1563).
materia medica. The prefatory epistles to Mattioli’s Dioscorides provide

proof of both tendencies. In his dedicatory letter to Johanna of Austria,
Mattioli lauds the work of recent scholars, such as Barbaro, Leoniceno,
and Manardo, who have “rediscovered and experimented with a consid-
erable number of plants” that could be found in Dioscorides.39 In that
same epistle Mattioli boasted that Francesco Calceolari, the Veronese
apothecary, had sent him “ever more rare plants” that he could put to
good use in his commentary on Dioscorides.40 Additionally, in these
years courses on medical “simples” became more widespread, and doc-
tors sought to deepen their knowledge of the classical botanical corpus
as well as incorporate new medicinals into their practices.41 Dioscorides
helped them to do that. Finally, and most relevant to our purposes,
Dioscorides’ text, like many Greek and Latin classics, came to be the
subject of antiquarian exegesis: scholars interested in the history of
ancient medicine or the material life of the first-century Mediterranean
read De materia medica as a work that furnished rare and important
examples of the quotidian life of an ancient culture. It is from this
matrix of plant collecting, pharmaceutical innovation, and antiquarian
research that Amatus’s commentary emerged. Eventually, philological
establishment of “true” Greek scientific texts paved the way for various
sorts of a nalyses – including the combination of botanical research and
biblical studies. Seeking an ever-wider range of ancient texts to clarify
Dioscorides, Renaissance scholars turned to the Bible as well. At the
same time, Dioscorides illuminated obscure biblical passages.
Amatus used Dioscorides to amplify the Bible more than once. For
example, in a concise essay entitled “On the Genitals of the Male Deer,”
Amatus explained the simple meaning of a verse from Psalm 42.42 His
aim was to improve his readers’ understanding of a biblical passage in
39
Mattioli, Discorsi (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1568), sig *6v. The letter begins on sig *2r and
is entitled “alla serenissima principessa Giovanna archiduchessa d’Austria, etc., Principessa
eccellentissima di Fiorenza, et di Siena, etc., mia clementissima signora.” Johanna of Austria
was the daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I. She married Francesco of Tuscany in 1565.
Mattioli was a stark critic of Amatus, and wrote a short work that accused Amatus not only
of poor scholarship but also of Judaizing. For more on this episode, see Friedenwald, The
Jews and Medicine, 1:341–9.
40
Mattioli, Discorsi, sig **2v. Calceolari’s name is spelled Calceolario here.
41
Ogilvie, The Science of Describing, 33.
42
Amatus Lusitanus, De materia medica, book II, enarratio 39, pp. 269–71: “De cervi masculi
genitale.”
order to strengthen its spiritual impact. Though the topic was technical,
the effect of his exposition was anything but: it made sense of a vague
natural metaphor in the Psalms.
Amatus’s analysis of the medicinal value of a male deer’s bodily dis-
charges explained the behavior of deer. Notably, a classical Roman
author was his main guide. Following Pliny’s Natural History, Amatus
observed that stags are deadly to serpents, which hide away in caves but
are eventually eaten by them.43 Turning his mind to the Bible, Amatus
immediately added that “this is what King David, the prophet, meant
in his Psalm, when he said ‘as the hart longs for water streams, so does
my soul long for you, O God.’”44 Pliny’s zoological observations taught
Amatus how deer voraciously pursue their prey, and Psalm 42 provided
an example. That knowledge helped him understand the meaning of the
psalmist’s metaphor. Not content with generalizations about deer behav-
ior, Amatus supplemented his gloss on the feeding habits of that animal
with geographic precision. He added that “in the regions of the east,
where serpents customarily grow to be very large, deer often lurk around
stagnant waters to find serpents to eat.”45 In other words, King David,
living “in the regions of the East,” would have had the opportunity to
see keen deer give chase to large serpents that hide in mountain streams.
Geographic specificity lent greater precision to Amatus’s explanation of
biblical deer.
Amatus consulted diverse sources of geographic knowledge. For
example, accounts about the New World by Iberian explorers were con-
spicuous. In “On the Genitals of the Male Deer,” Amatus observed that
“a certain jewel is gaining popularity these days, which was first brought
from India to the Portuguese . . . many people call this stone deer’s tear,
43
Ibid., 270. “Nam cervi ut testatur Plinius capite 32. libri octavi, cum serpentibus habent
pugnam, ita ut investigent cavernas, et eas narium spiritu extrahant, renitentes: quod libro
xxviii. cap. 9. prope finem confirmavit, dicens: ‘exitio iis (hoc est serpentibus) esse cervos
nemo ignorat ut si quae sunt, extractas cavernis, mandentes.’” See Pliny, Natural History
28:39.
44
Amatus Lusitanus, De materia medica, book II, enarratio 39, 270: “Hoc innuit Regius
Propheta David in psalmo, cum dicat: ‘sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum ita anima
mea desiderat ad te domine.’” I have used the Jewish Publication Society version of the Bible
in my translation above. Psalm 42:1.
45
Amatus Lusitanus, De materia medica, book II, enarratio 39, 270: “Nam post esum serpen-
tium, in orientalibus regionibus, ubi praegrandes reperiri solent, tunc vero ea infestus siti,
cervus praesto ad stagnantes aquas confluit.”
and some others call it belzahart. It is an exceptional and divine antidote,

proven to work against all sorts of poisons.”46 For a practicing physician
of the mid-sixteenth century, medical expertise necessitated firsthand
experience with a variety of medicaments, including exotic ones. In the
case of a medicinal product as rare and desirable as a deer’s tear, Amatus
was compelled to describe his initial acquaintance with it. In Venice, one
of sixteenth-century Europe’s thriving seaports, precious stones were
avidly sought and easily found.47 Amatus recounts a tale about meeting
Beatriz de Luna, “an extremely wealthy woman who, arriving in Venice,
had one of those [i.e., deer’s tear] stones that came from animals of
the Indies, brought back by some noble Portuguese [sailor].”48 Amatus
included this anecdote to prove that he had seen and handled this stone.
To later natural philosophers such as Ulisse Aldrovandi, passages such as
this one were especially apposite and were explicitly flagged.49
Medical inquiry led Amatus to meditate on the meaning of a natural
metaphor in the Psalms. But before his mind wandered to the psalmist’s
strategies, he began his study of a medicinal product that originated
in an animal’s body with a description of that animal’s behavior and,
46
Amatus Lusitanus, De materia medica, 269–70: “circumfertur hodie lapillus quidem ex
India ad Lusitanos primo advectus, ut plurimum magnitudine et figura glandis colore cine-
ritio ad cyaneum inclinante, multis compositus laminis, quem ‘cervi lachrymam’ quidam,
alii vero ‘lapidem belzahart’ appellant, et illum, tanquam praestantissimum ac divinum
antidotum, contra omne genus veneni approbant.” Deer’s tears (lacrimae cervi) were mine-
ral substances excreted by male deer which, in the Renaissance, were thought to possess
curative powers. See Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols.
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 4: 311.
47
See Jacqueline Herald, Renaissance Dress in Italy, 1400–1500 (London: Bell & Hyman,
1981), 173–5.
48
Amatus Lusitanus, De materia medica, 271: “nunc quum haec literis commendabamus, illu-
stris Domina Beatrix à Luna, mulier opulentissima, Venetiis agens, lapillum unum ex iis quos
describimus ab Indiae animali extractum a quodam nobili Lusitano, qui apud Indos Prorex
fuerat.” Lusitanus went on to give the price that the noblewoman paid for the stone – 130
golden ducats – and describes its ovular shape and impressive size: “centum et triginta aureis
ducatis emit: erat enim lapillus ille, ut hoc quoque dicamus ovalis fere magnitudinis.” Beatriz
de Luna, also known as Doña Gracia Nasi, lived in Venice between 1544 and 1549, when
she relocated to Ferrara. For information on her movements, see José Emilio Burucúa, “Les
enjeux culturels du texte biblique dans l’Europe du XVIe siècle,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences
Sociales 58:6 (November–December 2003): 1347–66, 1350. On Beatriz de Luna, see Maria
Giuseppina Muzzarelli, “Beatriz de Luna, Viuda de Mendes, llamada doña Gracia Nasi:
una hebrea influyente (1510–c. 1569),” in Ottavia Niccoli, ed., La mujer del Renacimiento
(Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1993), 115–47.
49
See subsequent discussion in this chapter’s section “Ulisse Aldrovandi and Biblical Studies.”
eventually, the properties of deer’s tears themselves. That was common

practice in sixteenth-century natural philosophy.50 Still, Amatus’s leap to
biblical exegesis was anything but common, and his intense interest in
the language of the Psalms requires explanation.
The Vulgate Bible in the Sixteenth Century

Of all the biblical books, the Psalms were perhaps the most popular
in sixteenth-century Italy. Because of their centrality to religious wor-
ship, their proper translation was hotly debated, and new editions of
the Psalms rolled off European presses in Latin and various vernaculars
from the 1530s on. Furthermore, establishing an accurate and readable
biblical text was a preoccupation of European clergymen and scholars
throughout the sixteenth century. And that preoccupation grew in scale
and scope after midcentury. Even though the Council of Trent upheld the
authenticity of the fifth-century Latin Vulgate, dissatisfaction with that
text was growing, and Hebraists – Jewish and Christian – had much to
do with promoting that dissatisfaction.51 Additionally, from the perspec-
tive of textual criticism the Psalms were especially problematic. The text
of the Psalms found in the Vulgate Bible was based not on the Hebrew
but rather on a revision of the Vetus Latina against the Septuagint col-
umn of Origen’s Hexapla.52 Amatus expressed his dissatisfaction with
the Vulgate’s rendering of the Psalms so boldly because he was steadfast
in his belief that translations ought to be based on the Hebrew text of
the Bible.
Criticism of the Vulgate Bible was not new in the sixteenth century.
Nor did natural philosophers play a conspicuous role in promoting it.
Indeed, vociferous criticism of the Vulgate may be traced back to the
50
See Laurent Pinon, “Conrad Gesner and the Historical Depth of Renaissance Natural
History,” in Nancy Siraisi and Gianna Pomata, eds., Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 241–59.
51
On the status of the Vulgate in post-Tridentine Italy, see G.-M. Vosté, “La Volgata al Concilio
di Trento,” Biblica 27 (1946): 301–19; Edmund F. Sutcliffe, “The Council of Trent on the
Authentia of the Vulgate,” Journal of Theological Studies 49 (1948): 35–42; Hildebrand
Höpfl, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sixto-Klementinischen Vulgata (Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 1913), esp. 1–43; Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo: la censura ecclesiastica e i
volgarizzamenti della Scrittura (1471–1605) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), esp. 75–109.
52
Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica,
trans. Erroll F. Rhodes (London: S.C.M. Press Ltd., 1980), 91–5.
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and prominent figures such as
Lorenzo Valla (1406–57), Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), and Jacques
Lefèvre d’Étaples (1455–1536). As early as 1444 Lorenzo Valla pointed
out errors in the Vulgate in his work on the Greek New Testament.
But he did not correct them.53 Other scholars, such as Sante Pagnini
(1470–1536), doubted that Jerome was its author. For how could such
an authority, the argument went, compose such a problematic transla-
tion? While direct criticism of the Vulgate originated in the late fifteenth
century, scholars had expressed doubts concerning its veracity and
fidelity to the Hebrew Bible in the Middle Ages. Raymondus Martinus
(d. 1286) and Nicholas of Lyra (ca. 1270–1349) pointed out places where
the Vulgate text did not square with the Hebrew version. Additionally,
they observed how the language of the Vulgate frequently diverged from
the Latin that Jerome quotes in his commentaries.54 Though criticisms
of the Vulgate Bible were frequent, critics did not question the text’s
inerrancy. A common way of reconciling the Vulgate’s inaccuracies with
the esteem in which the Western church held that text was to argue,
as the Spanish commentator Johannes Driedo did, that while Jerome
may have made mistakes in his translation, he was irreproachable on
doctrinal issues and on the portions of the Bible upon which those doc-
trinal formulations rest.55 In other words, linguistic details mattered less
than doctrinal ones. The censor and Hebraist Bellarmine made the same
argument years after Driedo.56 As the foregoing evidence suggests, the
doctrinal portions of the Bible were not the only ones that mattered to
natural philosophers such as Amatus and Ulisse Aldrovandi; to them,
scripture’s natural terminology was at least as important, since it could
augment their knowledge of natural philosophy.
Besides the overall accuracy of Jerome’s Vulgate, another closely
related topic that engaged sixteenth-century Bible scholars was the
status of Hebrew and Greek versions of scripture. The Complutensian
53
Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Renaissance
Thought, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 1:223.
54
Eugene Rice Jr., St Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1985), 175.
55
Ibid., 181.
56
X.-M. LeBachelet, Bellarmin et La Bible Sixto-Clémentine: études et documents (Paris:
G. Beauchesne, 1911), 107.
Polyglot, published in the early years of the sixteenth century, held a

dim view of Greek texts of the Bible. For example, the editors tailored
the Greek text to correspond more cleanly to the Vulgate.57 In the Old
Testament section of the Complutensian Polyglot, the Latin text of the
Vulgate was set in the middle of the page, flanked by Greek and Hebrew
on either side. A prologue to the text remarks that the Vulgate lay inno-
cently between two thieves, calling to mind for early sixteenth-century
readers how Jesus himself was crucified between two thieves.58 At the
century’s beginning, the reigning assumption was that the Vulgate was
the superior biblical text: discrepancies between it and its Greek and
Hebrew sources could be attributed to faulty manuscripts and improper
readings of those sources.
By the end of the sixteenth century, Catholic authorities reversed their
views. The prefatory material to the 1592 Clementine/Sixtine Bible con-
ceded that a revision of Jerome’s Vulgate was necessary. More to the
point, it admitted that recourse to Greek and Hebrew texts was essen-
tial to establishing a dependable biblical text.59 In seventy-five years,
the Catholic Church radically shifted its views to recognize the value of
Hebrew and Greek. As José Emilio Burucúa has shown, the publication
of this particular Bible provoked crises all over the Catholic world, and
not just in the offices of learned philologists: since parish priests in far-
flung communities continued to read from previous editions of the Bible
in church, the authority of the Clementine/Sixtine text was very slowly
established.60
This reorientation toward the value of Greek and Hebrew was facil-
itated by the persistence and vehemence of attacks on Jerome’s Vulgate
translation, to which Amatus lent his voice. Although the Council of
Trent mandated in a decree of 8 April 1546 that the “Old Latin Vulgate”
was the only authorized version of the Bible, scholars in Italy and beyond
57
Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness, 1:101.
58
Biblia Polyglotta (Alcalá de Henares, 1514–17), 6 vols: vol. 1, sig. + iii v: “mediam autem
inter has latinam beati Hieronymi translationem velut inter Synagogam et Orientalem
Ecclesiam posuimus: tamquam duos hinc et inde latrones medium autem Iesum, hoc est
Romanam sive latinam Ecclesiam, collocantes.”
59
Giancarlo Pani, “Un centenaire à rappeler: l’édition Sixtine des Septante,” in Irena Backus and
Francis Higman, eds., Théorie et pratique de l’exégèse (Geneva: Droz, 1990), 413–38, 417.
60
Burucúa, “Les enjeux culturels,” 1365–6.
expressed their dissatisfaction with Jerome’s Latin.61 Valla initiated a

trend and did not serve as its sole bearer. Desiderius Erasmus, Marsilio
Ficino, and Giles of Viterbo all took issue with Jerome’s translation and
preferred that of Sante Pagnini.62 Neither Jews nor conversos, as we have
seen, refrained from lambasting the Vulgate, either.
Amatus stood at the confluence of two traditions: Hebrew biblical
scholarship and Latinate humanism. Born to Jewish parents and the ben-
eficiary of early instruction in Hebrew, he knew the language well enough
in his middle age to make piquant comments on proper translation from
Hebrew to Latin. In his medical case studies he also alludes to reading
Hebrew manuscripts, as when he discusses the Alphabet of Ben Sira in his
consilium about an unfortunate nun who found herself with child.63 And
he knew contemporary European biblical scholarship. Amatus’s com-
mentary on Dioscorides’ De materia medica presented an opportunity
for him to use natural philosophic knowledge to clarify the Bible.
When it came to using research in natural philosophy to deepen
scholars’ knowledge of the Bible and the biblical world, Amatus’s future
readers were just as devoted to these matters as he was. No mere eccen-
tric, Amatus’s interests can be understood within and traced back to
a distinct moment in Italian cultural, intellectual, and institutional his-
tory. The combination of medical training and biblical literacy enabled
Amatus’s discussion of the Bible in the context of a scientific work. And
the impact of this approach was significant: future readers of Amatus’s
consilia and his commentaries displayed similar tendencies and com-
bined botanical research with scriptural observations. Ulisse Aldrovandi
was one such reader.
61
For the decree, see F. Schulte and A. L. Richter, eds., Canones et decreta concilii Tridentini
(Leipzig: Bernhardus Tauchnitii, 1853), 12.
62
On Pagnini, see T. M. Centi, “L’attività letteraria di Santi Pagnini (1470–1536) nel campo
delle scienze bibliche,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 15 (1945): 5–51; Giorgio Spini,
Tra rinascimento e riforma: Antonio Brucioli (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1940), 204–5;
David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham
ben Mordecai Farissol (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981), 83.
63
Curationum medicinalium Amati Lusitani medici physici praestantissimi tomus primus
continens centurias quator (Venice: apud Balthesarem Constantinum, 1557), centuria IV,
36, p. 562: “hodie extant non pauca egregia documenta et dicteria elegantissima Hebraica
lingua conscripta.” This case study received unfavorable attention from church authorities.
See Girolamo Rossi’s expurgatory Censura of Centuriae from Ravenna, 1597 in ACDF,
Index, Protocolli, O (II.a.13), fols. 626r, 627r–628v, 629v; reproduced in Spruit and Baldini,
Catholic Church and Modern Science, 751–5, 752.3333.
Ulisse Aldrovandi and Biblical Studies

The prominent Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi was, like Amatus,
a close reader of the Bible and an accomplished natural philosopher.
Furthermore, Aldrovandi knew that Amatus wrote about the Psalms
in his commentary to Dioscorides. He shared Amatus’s interest in the
acquisition of a rare medicinal product, deer’s tears, and brought the
Bible into his discussion of it. As we saw, a discourse on stones believed
to function as antidotes – known as deer’s tears – provided Amatus an
opportunity to discuss a natural metaphor in Psalm 42. Aldrovandi knew
this work and openly acknowledged his debt. The Bolognese naturalist
penned a five-folio essay called “On Deer’s Tears” that may be found
within an unwieldy manuscript volume entitled Miscellanea de animali-
bus et plantis (Miscellany concerning animals and plants). Their similar
educational backgrounds and consistent approach toward the study of
nature led both Amatus and Aldrovandi, though separated by a genera-
tion, to intermingle medical commentary and scriptural exegesis.
Ulisse Aldrovandi knew Hebrew. Hebrew words appear frequently in
works such as his Pandechion epistemonicon and throughout his writ-
ings.64 He wrote several short paragraphs about the word arov, a word
meaning various types of wild beasts, and lengthier ones on the Hebrew
terms for fermentation and yeast.65 In fact, his study of the language
was serious enough that he composed a short tract entitled Rudiments
of Hebrew Grammar.66 Furthermore, he also addressed the role Hebrew
played in his intellectual worldview, and such comments illuminate
his view of the Hebrew language. “Among the seventy-two languages
that were born from the seventy-two nations of the house of Israel,”
Aldrovandi wrote, “only three were always held in greatest veneration
among all the others: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In those languages,
64
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 105 (83 volumes). See, for example, ALIM–ANET 71v; A–AM 286v,
288r, 296r; FER–FIN 114v; GLAPH–GYRI 103v; UNI–ZYR 515v. This list is far from
exhaustive and reflects a perusal of a portion of the eighty-three volumes of Pandechion
epistemonicon.
65
For arov, see BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 21, 4:531r: “Arob quid apud Hebreos.” For Aldrovandi’s
remarks on fermentation, see “Ulyssis Aldrovandi Historia περὶ τῆς Ζυμῆς, seu de fermento
ad Illustrissimum et Reverendissimum Cardinalem Palaeotum Bononiensem Episcopum
vigilatissimum,” in BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 6, 3:57r–79r, esp. 60r–61v.
66
Hebraicae linguae rudimenta, in BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 97, 128r–133r.
writings on divine and indeed human things were preserved.”67 The

order in which Aldrovandi listed those languages is indicative of how
he felt about them: Hebrew held a primary position. And the fact that
Hebrew preserved “human things” was alluring to the Bolognese natu-
ralist. To emphasize Hebrew’s importance beyond theological investi-
gation, Aldrovandi maintained that “Hebrew has something to do with
every sort of human talent.” He elaborated that “in it there is a profound
abyss of secrets, impossible to penetrate, in which the more progress
extremely learned men make, the more they confess their ignorance.”68
The notion that Hebrew contained or provided access to secrets was a
belief Aldrovandi shared with his medical colleague and fellow lexicog-
rapher David de’ Pomi.69
But Aldrovandi was especially fervent in his cultivation of Hebrew let-
ters: he suggested that the language might displace other tools of scientific
learning. In his essay “How the Hebrew Language Perfectly Expresses
the Nature of Things,” Aldrovandi asserted that “this holy and divine
language is useful not only for knowing divine things but also for gain-
ing knowledge of the human sciences. As such, he who diligently consid-
ers the virtues of [its] words and knows the power of their etymologies
will progress further in the knowledge of natural things than if he had
memorized all of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Pliny, Dioscorides, and other
similar authors.”70 For Aldrovandi, Hebrew was the holiest language.
67
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 83, Bibliologia, 1:438–9: “Tra le settantadue lingue che dalle 72
natione della casa d’Israel son nate, sole tre sono state tenute sempre in grandissima vene-
ratione fra tutte l’altre lingue cioè l’Hebrea, Graeca, et Latina. Sì perchè in quelli sono state
conservate le scritture delle cose divine et parimente humane.”
68
Ibid., 1:443: “perche lì si trova un profundo abisso de’ secreti, che mai si può penetrare nello
quale quanto più gran progresso fanno gli huomini literatissimi, tanto più confessano la sua
ignoranza.”
69
For more on de’ Pomi and the belief that Hebrew provided access to “secrets,” see
Chapter 3.
70
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 83, Bibliologia, 1:445: “questa santa et divina lingua non solo è utilis-
sima a fare conoscere le cose divine ma ancora per conseguire le scienze humane. Perciochè
chi considerarà diligentemente la virtù delle parole et saprà la forza della lor etimologia farà
più gran progresso in la cognitione delle cose naturali, che se egli havesse a memoria tutta la
dottrina d’Aristotele, Teofrasto, Plinio, Dioscoride, et altri autori simili.” These ancient natu-
ral philosophers were not randomly chosen; they were the dominant figures in and sources
for sixteenth-century natural philosophy. For an introduction to sixteenth-century natural
philosophy, see William A. Wallace, “Traditional Natural Philosophy,” in Charles B. Schmitt
and Quentin Skinner, eds., Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), 201–35.
However, its holiness derived not from its instantiation in the Bible but
rather from the fact that it corresponded more closely to nature than
either Latin or Greek did.71
Very little is known about how Aldrovandi learned Hebrew. In his
voluminous writings, he never mentions a Jewish teacher, nor does he
comment on the genesis of his Hebrew knowledge or his progress in
learning the language. The Jewish banker, biblical commentator, and
educator Ovadiah Sforno lived mere meters from Aldrovandi’s home.72
Though there is no firm evidence of intellectual contact between the two
men, it is possible that Aldrovandi may have sought Sforno’s help on
matters Hebraic. The Bolognese naturalist did, however, possess Hebrew
71
On the standard view of Hebrew as a divine language, see Jean Ceard, “Le ‘De originibus’ de
Postel et la linguistique de son temps,” in M. L. Kuntz, ed., Postello, Venezia e il suo mondo,
Atti del II Convegno internazionale su Postel (Venezia, 5–9 settembre 1982) (Florence: L. S.
Olschki, 1988), 19–44, 24. For more on the idea that Hebrew expresses natural things, see
Paolo Simoncelli, La lingua di Adamo: Guillaume Postel tra accademici e fuoriusciti fiorentini
(Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1984), 67. Two sixteenth-century sources that predate Aldrovandi
are worthy of mention here. Théodor Bibliander, in his De ratione communi omnium lin-
guarum et literarum commentarius (Zurich: C. Frosch, 1548), argued that Hebrew “was
the most perfect of all languages; its words explain natural things [illa perfectissima esset
omnium, cujus verba rerum naturas explanarent].” Postel, in his De Etruriae regionis . . .
commentatio (Florence: Torrentini, 1551), argued that Hebrew came the closest to natural
things, followed by other Semitic languages such as Arabic, Aramaic, and Syriac. See p. 59:
“sic inter omnes linguas mundi opus est esse unam primariam rerumque veritati proximam,
in qua ante omnes vocabulorum elucescat veritas. Volo autem mihi ex sola authoritate illo-
rum, qui hoc asseverarunt, concedi, quod sit ipsa Hebraica, et quae illi sunt proximae, ut est
Arabica, Chaldaicae duae, Syriaca Maroniticave et Ethiopica.” See also Chevalier’s ‫פתח אהל‬
‫ מועד‬Rudimenta hebraicae linguae (Paris: Stephanus, 1567), particularly his letter to Theodor
Beza of December 1559, unnumbered pages: “confido fore ut huius linguae studia tanto
omnium maxime necessaria, quanto pietas omni humana eruditione praestat, cum caeteris
bonis artibus ac disciplinis tandem penitus ex densissimis tenebris emergant.” For medie-
val antecedents to this view among Jewish scholars, see Moshe Idel, Language, Torah, and
Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988),
1–28; in the sixteenth century, see Azariah de’ Rossi, Me’or Enayim, chap. 57 (Vilna, 1866
[1572]), 453–66; Azariah de’ Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, trans. and ed. Joanna Weinberg
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 672–90; Judah Moscato, Kol Yehudah, 2:68.
72
Sforno’s address (no. 80 il Vívaro, at the corner of Piazza Santo Stefano) is listed in
Guidicini, Cose notabili della città di Bologna, 5 vols. (Bologna: tipografia delle scienze di
Giuseppe Vitali, 1868–73), 5:99. See also Mario Fanti, ed., Gli schizzi topografici originali
di Giuseppe Guidicini per le cose notabili della città di Bologna (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni,
2000), 342, illustration no. 506 for the location of Sforno’s home; for the proximity of
Aldrovandi’s home, see ibid., 291, illustration no. 416. Information about the location and
sale of Ovadiah Sforno’s home may be found in his will of 1 February 1549. See Archivio di
Stato di Bologna, Notarile Pietro Zanettini 7/0 filza 26 (2496). When Sforno died in 1550,
Aldrovandi was twenty-eight years old.
grammars and other works concerning Hebrew philology, including

books by Johannes Reuchlin, Antoine Rodolphe Chevalier, Johannes
Drusius, and Robert Bellarmine.73 One of his manuscripts presents evi-
dence of Aldrovandi repeatedly copying out the Hebrew alphabet, as a
beginning student might.74 Given the large number of Hebrew grammars
he owned, and absence of any mention of an instructor, it would appear
that Aldrovandi learned Hebrew autodidactically.
As information regarding Aldrovandi’s study of Hebrew is rare, evi-
dence of his use of that language is abundant. One of the many ways he
displayed his knowledge of Hebrew was by arguing that a deer’s tear
is different from Bezar, or Belzar, “as it is called by the Jews.”75 After
reviewing several standard, published Latin accounts of the properties of
this stone written by Marsilio Ficino, Tomasso Cospi, and Julius Caesar
Scaliger, Aldrovandi informed his friend and patron, the bishop Gabriele
Paleotti, that he could buy one for himself.76 As he encouraged the pow-
erful bishop to acquire such a stone, he also told Paleotti – and future
readers as well – where he came upon a description of this stone. “Most
revered father,” Aldrovandi writes, “you could see one for yourself if you
were able to buy it with money. Amatus testifies to having seen a honey-
colored deer’s tear.” Aldrovandi also explained that his description of
73
Of the Hebrew grammars Aldrovandi owned, Bologna’s Biblioteca Universitaria still posses-
ses the following: Johannes Reuchlin, De accentibus, et orthographia, linguae hebraicae . . .
libri tres (Haguenau: Anshelm, 1518); Reuchlin, De rudimentis Hebraicis . . . libri tres
(Pforzheim: Anshelm, 1506); Johannes Drusius, Ebraicarum quaestionum, sive, quaestionum
ac responsionum libri duo (Lyon: Elsevier, 1583); Reuchlin, Drusii animadversionum libri
duo. In quibus praeter dictionem Ebraicam plurima loca Scripturae, interpretumque vete-
rum explicantur, emendantur (Leiden: Iohannes Paetsius, 1585); Wigand Happel, Linguae
sanctae canones grammatici (Basel: Thomas Guerinus, 1561); Nicolas Clénard, Tabulae in
grammaticam hebraeam . . . ad haec literarum, quas serviles nominant, potestates adiectae
sunt, itemque Psalmi aliquot ad verbum redditi (Cologne: Birckman, 1567); Luiz de Sao
Francisco, Globus canonum, et arcanorum linguae sanctae, ac diuinae Scripturae (Rome:
Bartholomeus de Grassis, 1586); Roberto Bellarmino, Institutiones linguae hebraicae ex
optimo quoque auctore collectae (Rome: Dominicus Basa, 1585). BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 147
contains an inventory of the naturalist’s library. Dr. Maria Cristina Bacchi of Bologna’s
Biblioteca universitaria is currently preparing an edition of this manuscript for publication.
I wish to thank her for her private correspondence with me on this matter.
74
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 21, 4:23r–25r.
75
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 97, 514r.
76
I have not been able to identify Thomasso Cospi. Of him Aldrovandi writes that he com-
posed a “luongo trattato” on deer’s tears. See Ms. Aldrovandi 97, 514v. Perhaps Thomasso
Cospi was a progenitor of Ferdinando Cospi, the seventeenth-century Bolognese naturalist
whose collection became the Museo Cospiano in Bologna.
the stone comes from Amatus, and a marginal annotation makes this
explicit, stating the precise location in Amatus’s De materia medica
where he opined about what “King David meant.”77 But Aldrovandi was
not merely a reader of Amatus; he followed in his footsteps. Many pas-
sages in his immense corpus of naturalistic writings display a conscious
effort to try to understand the Bible better by using natural philosophy –
and to understand natural philosophy better by using the Bible. For
Aldrovandi, as for Amatus, philology was the foundation upon which
his biblical commentary rested.
Aldrovandi’s debt to Amatus is not always obvious. In another, very dif-
ferent work, Aldrovandi reveals himself to be a reader of Amatus but not
an acknowledged one. His definition of agolochum (aloe wood), which
may be found in his unpublished three-volume, trilingual Latin-Hebrew-
Syriac dictionary, indicates that he was reading Amatus. Furthermore, it
shows that he sided with Amatus against Münster. Most importantly, it
demonstrates how seriously Aldrovandi took philology. An analysis of
Aldrovandi’s lexicographical work allows us to see how powerful and
pervasive the combination of Hebraic knowledge and natural expertise
was in sixteenth-century Italy.
Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Lexicon latino-hebraico et syro-chaldaicum rerum
quae in Sacris Bibliis leguntur (Latin-Hebrew and Syriac-Chaldean lexi-
con of things read in Holy Scriptures) is not a work of original scholarship
but largely a series of extracts from two major sources: Sante Pagnini’s
Thesaurus linguae sanctae and Benito Arias Montano’s Lexicon hebrai-
cum et chaldaicum that constitutes part of the apparatus to the Antwerp
Polyglot.78 Although most entries in Aldrovandi’s sprawling lexicon – it
extends to three volumes, each more than one thousand folios – are
admitted borrowings from these two popular lexicographical works, a
few entries display originality of thought. Conspicuously, terms touching
upon natural matters receive Aldrovandi’s fullest attention.
The woods of the biblical world were one of Aldrovandi’s consuming
interests. Much of his two-volume vernacular study of the cross upon
which Jesus was crucified is an extended analysis of woods of the ancient
77
Ibid., 516r–516v: “potrebbe Vostra Illustrissima vedere se per danari la potesse comprar da
qual Reverendissimo Padre. Testifica Amato Lusitano haver veduto una lagrima di cervo, di
color di mele.” The marginal note “lib. 2 in Enar. Dios. c. 39” is on 517v.
78
Biblia sacra hebraice, chaldaice, graece, latine (Antwerp: Plantin, 1568–73), 8 vols.; vol. 7.
Near East.79 In his prolix work, Aldrovandi penned two entries for
agalochum. Both mention specific biblical books, and both display the
combination of botanical expertise and biblical fluency that Amatus also
exhibited in his work a generation earlier. Aldrovandi’s first entry treats
agalochum as a geographic place; his second examines it as a botanical
product. In the preliminary entry, Aldrovandi defines the term with the
Hebrew word egel and speculates that agalochum might be the name of
a region where aloe wood – the featured product in Amatus’s debate
with Münster – comes from. He also notes that it is a “most celebrated”
medicinal product and posits that “agallim,” a cognate term, is a place
mentioned in Isaiah, “whence perhaps aloe wood is brought to us.”80 In
his subsequent entry Aldrovandi pushes his analysis further and moves
beyond geographic into philological matters. Once again he reveals his
debt to Amatus.
Aldrovandi, echoing Amatus’s gloss on ahalot, or aloe wood, draws
an equivalence between agalochum, lignum aloes, ahalot, aksila lea-
van, and stacte. The precise association of like terms in Latin, Hebrew,
Aramaic, and Greek that Amatus had advocated, and which was a fea-
ture of Renaissance botany, is upheld by Aldrovandi.81 “In the Nebiensis
Heptaplus,” Aldrovandi observes, agalochum “is discovered to be aksila
leavan. In Hebrew it is ahalot, and in Greek stacte.”82 For Aldrovandi,
this substance is “aloe wood, or storaceis” and is found in the “Venetian
Bible, Psalm 45.”83 Psalm 45, of course, is the same psalm that Amatus
scrutinized in his commentary to Dioscorides’ De materia medica.
Though Aldrovandi neither explicitly acknowledges Amatus as his
79
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 51, De cruce (2 vols.).
80
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 50, Ulyssis Aldrovandi Lexicon latino-hebraico et syro-chaldaicum
rerum quae in Sacris Bibliis leguntur, 1:15r. “Agalochum, ‫ אגל‬egel, stella, gutta, vel emanatio
unde fortasse lignum aloe Agalochum nuncupatur quod exemanat et stillat succus in medi-
cina celeberrimus. Agallim etiam est proprium nomen loci in Esaia, unde fortasse pretiosis-
simum hoc genus ligni ad nos advehitur.”
81
On polyglossia in Renaissance botanical texts, see Ogilvie, The Science of Describing,
44, 173.
82
Aldrovandi is referring to Agostino Giustiniani’s 1516 polyglot psalter: Psalterium, hebra-
eum, graecum, arabicum, et chaldaeum (Genoa: Impressit Petrus Paulus Porrus, 1516).
Known as the Nebiensis Heptaplus (because Giustiniani was the bishop of Nebbio on
Corsica), it contained seven versions of the Psalms: Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and Aramaic, as
well as three Latin versions. Psalm 45 is on Sig. H iiv. There are no scholia on this psalm.
83
Aldrovandi is referring to the Biblia Rabbinica, or Miqra’ot Gedolot (Venice: Daniel
Bomberg, 1516–17).
source nor takes on Münster directly, he emphasizes that this substance

is “aksila, which comes from the Greek ksulon.” And if his readers could
not understand Aramaic or Greek, Aldrovandi puts it quite plainly and
adds that this is “wood.” If there were any doubts at this point about
the fact that this natural ingredient is not a leaf or a resin but something
more durable, Aldrovandi notes, “I believe that this cannot be under-
stood as stacte or storax, since stacte is a fresh, scented type of myrrh.
And the storax plant comes from xyloaloë, that is, Hebalogho. So we
cannot understand the aloe herb here.”84 From a manuscript catalog
of his library that was completed shortly before Aldrovandi’s death in
1605, we know that he owned and signed Amatus’s commentary on
Dioscorides with his usual autograph “Ulisse Aldrovandi and friends.”85
More importantly, these two entries, especially the second one, provide
additional evidence of how interconnected natural knowledge and bibli-
cal competence were in this Italian community of natural philosophers.
An important key to reading the Bible accurately was a thorough knowl-
edge of natural science – in this case, expert acquaintance with trees and
their leaves, resins, and woods.
Aloe was not the only type of wood to appear in the Psalms that
engaged Aldrovandi’s attention. He was just as interested in cedar wood
and wrote about it extensively in another unpublished manuscript com-
position. Those remarks establish that Aldrovandi’s approach to biblical
natural history was empirical: once he was satisfied with his definition
of a biblical term, his next priority was to experience it.86 With the help
of several of his correspondents, Aldrovandi was able to hold in his hand
what he deemed to be biblical cedar wood.
Like many naturalists of his time, Aldrovandi desired to see and touch
the natural products he wrote about. Empiricism, after all, was a hallmark
84
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 50, Ulyssis Aldrovandi Lexicon latino-hebraico et syro-chaldaicum
rerum quae in Sacris Bibliis leguntur, 1:15v: “Agalochum. In exemplari Nebiensis Heptaplo
reperitur ‫ אסקילא ליאוון‬askila leavan. Ubi est in Hebraeo ‫ אהלות‬ahaloth, in Graeco στακτὴ.
Lignum Aloës, seu storacis, Psal. 45 in Bibliis venetianis et Chaldaice scribitur ‫ אקסילא‬aksila
a Graeco ξύλον. Lignum. Credo autem nequaquam intellegi posse stacte nec storax, quoniam
stacte est pinguedo recentis myrrhae et storax planta est ab xyloaloë id est Achalocho, hic
autem non possemus intelligere de alöe herba.”
85
“Ulyssis Aldrovandi et amicorum.”
86
On the importance of “experience” for early modern Italian naturalists, see Findlen,
Possessing Nature, 194–240.
of natural philosophy in the later sixteenth century.87 But the yearning

to see, smell, and touch natural elements from the biblical world was
something new in the second half of the sixteenth century. To bolster his
faith and deepen his reading of the Bible, Aldrovandi applied the same
expectations to its woods, gemstones, and animals as he did to those
described in Pliny, Theophrastus, or Dioscorides. Cedar wood is men-
tioned frequently in the Bible. It was also the type of wood, Aldrovandi
maintained, that was used to construct important objects in scripture,
such as Aaron’s staff and the musical instrument David played to ease
Saul’s spirit.88 Most important, it was a type of wood that Europeans of
his own day could experience firsthand.
Aldrovandi introduced the topic of cedar wood in De cruce, his two-
volume natural history of Jesus’ cross. The Bolognese naturalist’s discus-
sion of this wood comes in the context of a wide-ranging antiquarian
investigation of the physical properties of the cross, including its length
and its materials.89 In these pages, Aldrovandi hails two other natural
philosophers who had an equivalent interest in biblical botany, and in
cedar specifically: Melchior Guilandinus and Luca Ghini.90 Guilandinus,
the curator of Italy’s most celebrated botanical garden in Padua, made a
special effort to correspond with Aldrovandi about a rare type of cedar
believed to have been the very species mentioned in the Bible. And, most
importantly, Luca Ghini, who established the botanical garden at Pisa and
maintained it, went so far as to send Aldrovandi a specimen of this tree.
Aldrovandi’s writings show how fascination with biblical woods
extended far beyond a circle of precocious naturalists; clergymen and
political figures sought to have specimens of that same wood and con-
struct objects meant to remind them of its biblical origin. For exam-
ple, this same section of De cruce observes about cedar wood that “the
87
See Gianna Pomata and Nancy Siraisi, eds., Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 30. See also my discussion in
Chapter 5.
88
See Exodus 7:9ff.; and 1 Samuel 16:23, respectively. On contemporary European interest
in that biblical episode, especially among medical men, see Werner Kümmel, “Melancholie
und die Macht der Musik: Die Krankheit König Sauls in der historischen Diskussion,”
Medizinhistorisches Journal 3–4 (1968–9): 189–209.
89
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 51, De cruce, 1:99v et seq. “lunghezza della croce,” 100r et seq. “legni
della croce.”
90
For more on Guilandinus, see Chapter 2. Little is known of Ghini’s life. See Findlen, Possessing
Nature, esp. 6, 164–9. On Aldrovandi’s relationship with Ghini, see ibid., 368–9.
posts of the room of the Council of Ten in Venice are made from it.”
Reminders of biblical products abounded even in the halls of power. And
that same passage informs readers that Cardinal Paleotti was equally
enthused about this wood, going so far as to build a tabernacle out of it.
“If I remember correctly,” Aldrovandi wrote, “the illustrious Monsignor
Paleotti made an effort to have some of this wood to create a tabernacle
for the most holy sacrament on the altar.”91 As these quotations attest,
an interest in identifying the natural elements of the biblical world was
widespread in Italian culture in the later sixteenth century. Aldrovandi’s
reflections about cedar wood indicate his eagerness to relate to biblical
realia in contemporary terms and his desire to share his experiences with
like-minded individuals.
That same community, consisting of political figures, clergymen, and
naturalists, may have received stimulus to deepen its knowledge of the
Bible – and investigate the Bible’s natural world on empirical grounds –
from the mid-sixteenth century’s most celebrated religious event: the
Council of Trent. Aldrovandi reminisces about hunting for biblical
manna during odd moments of the Council of Trent in 1562:
And speaking of that same agarico, and heavenly manna, it is harvested

in the midst of common Larch [Larix decidua], which I believe is a spe-
cies of great cedar, as I show in my histories.92 It is certainly not the Larch
of Vitruvius, or of Pliny, or of Julius Caesar in his Commentaries, since it
has flowers and fruit and it burns in fire. These observations are entirely
opposed to the description given of the Larch by the ancients. This noble
tree grows abundantly in the mountains of Pergine above Trent, where
there are mines. I can testify to this, having seen it, and having picked
agarico with my own hands in 1562 during the first session of the holy
Tridentine Council, being in the company of Monsignor Cardinal Paleotti
and his brother Signor Camillo and Pope Urban VII.93
91
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 51, De cruce, 1:109v: “mi scrisse la pia memoria di Melchiore
Guilandino già prefetto dell’horto di Padova, che oltre il cedro tanto celebrato, del quale
sono fatte le porte della sala de capo di dieci in venetia, et se bene mi ricordo Monsignore
Illustrissimo Paleotti fece diligegnza d’havere di questo legno per fare un tabernacolo del
santissimo sacramento dell’altare me ne mandò un ramo il Ghini con frutti, osservò ancora
in quello molte piante non conosciute da moderni.”
92
I have not been able to locate the precise passage Aldrovandi refers to here.
93
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 51, De cruce, 1:4v–5r: “avvertendo ancora che il medesimo agarico
et mana celeste si raccoglie alcuna volta nel larice commune, il qual larice credo, che sia
Not only does this passage demonstrate how Aldrovandi combined

rigorous textual research and active engagement with Italian wildlife to
dispute the findings of ancient botanists; it also shows the shared interest
that Aldrovandi and highly placed clergymen held in one of the Bible’s
most magical and elusive foods. It was only after being sure that the
larice that he and the Paleotti brothers saw in Trentino was not the larice
described by Vitruvius, Pliny, or Caesar that Aldrovandi felt comfortable
enough to pronounce this plant manna. This reminiscence also indicates
that during the Council of Trent there was another type of religious
study taking place in addition to debates concerning church doctrine.
Clergymen and laymen alike were sallying into the hills around Trent to
find natural products from the Bible. Paleotti’s modern biographer notes
that “as soon as he was free from his conciliar duties, and very often at the
end of each session, Paleotti would wander the nearby mountains collect-
ing botanical simples to transplant into a botanical garden in Bologna.”94
With the help of Ulisse Aldrovandi, Cardinal Paleotti and Pope Urban VII
found tangible evidence of the Bible in the Dolomite foothills.
Aldrovandi’s research as a naturalist conditioned him to look for
overlaps between sacred history and natural history. In another section
of De cruce, Aldrovandi used a passage from Dioscorides’ De materia
medica not only to explain the Bible – much as Amatus had a genera-
tion before – but also to expound upon the Jewish custom of interment,
which was of considerable interest to other scholars of the time, notably
Isaac Casaubon.95 In doing so, Aldrovandi blended biblical and medical
una specie di cedro maggiore, come provo nelle mie Istorie, non essendo in alcun modo il
larice di Vitruvio, e di Plinio, et Giuglio Cesare nei Commentarii, per haver fiori, e frutti,
e brusciando nel fuoco, le quali note sono tutte contrarie alla descrittione data del Larice
degli antichi e questo nobile albero nasce copiosamente nei monti di Pergeni sopra Trento
nel luogo, dove sono le minere de metalli, come posso fare fede havendolo veduto, et cava-
tone con le proprie mani l’agarico, essendo in compagnia di Monsignore Illustrissimo Card.
Paleotti, et il Sig. Camillo suo fratello, et Papa Urbano settimo l’anno 1562 nella prima
sessione del sacro Concilio Tridentino.” For classical references to agaricum, which often
grows on larch trees, see Gigliola Maggiulli, Nomenclatura micologica latina (Genoa:
Istituto di Filologia Classica e Medievale, 1977), 84–96. Dr. Maggiulli identifies agarico as
either Fomes officinalis, or Boletus laricis, both of which are common fungi that grow on
larch trees throughout Northern and Central Europe, especially in forests and mountainous
regions. Many types of Larch agaric have medical properties. Ibid., 90.
94
Prodi, Il Cardinale Gabriele Paleotti, 1:130 n. 24.
95
See Isaac Casaubon, De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI (Frankfurt: Ruland,
1615), exercitatio XVI, § XCVIII: “de forma sepulchorum Iudaicorum observationes
commentary. Burial and specifically the burial customs of the Jews were
topics Aldrovandi developed elsewhere in his writings.96 In De cruce,
Aldrovandi’s remarks on cedar wood clarify its symbolic value to the
prophets as well as its curative and salubrious powers.
Cedar wood was a subject that led Aldrovandi to add a new dimen-
sion to his writing: sociological observation. Aldrovandi pointed out that
poorer Jews around the time of Jesus’ life used a product called cedria,
a resin obtained from cedar trees, to enclose cadavers and slow decom-
position. Having established this fact, Aldrovandi proceeded to clarify
the architectural, symbolic, and medical value of the resin. Aldrovandi
posited that “Noah’s Ark was made of it, and Solomon’s temple con-
structed of it.” The first testimony to the power of cedar wood came not
from a scientific text but rather from the Bible. This wood was “lauded
greatly by Ezekiel the prophet in the thirty-first chapter.” Among the
verses Aldrovandi cites is Ezekiel 31:3, which reads “therefore its height
was exalted above all the trees of the field, and its boughs were multi-
plied, and its branches became long because of the multitude of waters
when it shot forth.”97 This description of the cedar’s majesty is vague on
the specific curative properties of that wood. But for Aldrovandi that
was not the sort of datum the Bible was supposed to supply; he merely
wished to find a verse that cast the cedar in a majestic light. For specific
information about its medicinal value, Aldrovandi turned to a trusted
source: Dioscorides.
e scriptis Iudaeorum”; and § XCIX: “an mos sepeliendi in lateribus cryptarum ortus sit
è sepulchro Domini,” pp. 470 and 471, respectively. Casaubon’s remarks about Christ’s
burial, composed in response to Cardinal Cesare Baronio’s Annales ecclesiastici (Cologne:
sumptibus Ioannis Gymnici et Antonii-Hierati, 1609), are discussed in Anthony Grafton
and Joanna Weinberg, “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews,
and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2011), 281–3. I thank Joanna Weinberg for bringing this passage to my attention.
96
See BUB MS. Aldrovandi 30, De ritu sepeliendi, where he states in an essay entitled “On
the Preservation and Interment of Corpses” (De sepeliendis et condiendis cadaveribus, 39r),
dedicated to Gabriele Paleotti, that “it seems necessary that it be explained how the Jews
preserved and buried their dead” (Necesse videtur explicandum esse modum, quo Hebrei
condiebant sua cadavera ac sepeliebant).
97
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 51, De cruce, 1:4v: “Era ancora un secondo modo di condire per
quelli, che non volevano fare tanta spessa, come i primi. La onde usavano d’empire il cada-
vero di cedria, che è una sorte di resina, che nasce nel cedro maggiore, del quale fu fatta
l’Arca di Noe, e constrotto il tempio di Salomone, celebrato grandimente da Ezekiel pro-
fetta nel trigesimo primo capitolo dove dice: Ecce Assur quasi cedrus in Libano pulcher
ramis, et frondibus nemorosus, excelsusque altitudine, et inter condensas frondes elevatum
Dioscorides furnished proof for Aldrovandi that the cedar tree was an
effective retardant of decomposition. Of Jews in first-century Palestine,
Aldrovandi observed that “they used this to embalm the deceased, since
it has the ability to protect them from putrefaction. Dioscorides, in the
106th chapter of book 1, calls it vita mortuorum, when he says: ‘It has
a power that conserves deceased bodies and decomposes living ones.
For this reason some call it Life of the Dead.’”98 Aldrovandi was not the
only sixteenth-century naturalist to note Dioscorides’ praise of cedar
resin as a preservative for corpses. In his On the Admirable Works of
the Ancients, the French traveler and naturalist Pierre Belon did so as
well.99
For Aldrovandi, scrutinizing cedar’s medicinal value led to yet another
biblical meditation, this one on the magical food manna. Pondering
cedar’s other medicinal uses, Aldrovandi pointed out that “this cedar
has great power with various sicknesses, and wherever it grows one also
finds agarico and the heavenly manna celebrated by the Jews, which,
in my opinion is called cedromeli [cedar honey] by Hippocrates and is
truly mel cedarinum [honey of cedars].”100 Cedar is not only important
as a tree possessing symbolic power, as the verses from Ezekiel indicate.
It is also an effective medical product, especially insofar as it facilitates
burial. Finally, the power of the cedar tree extends far beyond its sym-
bolic value or its direct medical application. It nourishes the soil around
est cacumen eius. Aquae nutrierunt illum, abyssus exaltavit illum: flumina eius manabant
in circuitu radicum eius et rivos suos emisit ad universa ligna regionis. Propterea elevata est
altitudo eius super omnia ligna regionis: et multiplicata sunt arbusta eius, et elevati sunt
rami eius prae aquis multis” (emphasis in the original).
98
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 51, De cruce, 1:4r–4v: “et imbalsamando con quella i cadaveri per
haver facoltà di conservarli dalla putrefattione, è chiamata da Dioscoride nel capitolo cen-
tisimo sesto del primo libro vita mortuorum, quando dice: δύναμιν δὲ ἔχει σηπικὴν [μὲν τῶν
εμψύχων, φυλακτικήν] δὲ τῶν νεκρῶν σωμάτων ὅθεν καὶ νεκροῦ ζωήν τινες αὐτὴν ἐκάλεσαν cioè:
Cui ea vis inest, ut defuncta corpora conservet, et viventia corpora corrumpat, qua ex causa
aliqui mortuorum vitam appellavere (emphasis in the original).
99
Pierre Belon, De admirabili operum antiquorum et rerum suspiciendarum praestantia liber
primus. De medicato funere, seu cadavere condito, et lugubri defunctorum eiulatione liber
secundus. De medicamentis nonnullis servandi cadaveris vim obtinentibus liber tertius
(Paris: Guglielmo Cavellat, 1553), 2.3, 24v–25v. I am grateful to Nancy Siraisi for this
reference.
100
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 51, De cruce, 1:4r–4v: “La qual cedria ha gran facoltà in diversi morbi
e dove ella nasce, si ritrova ancora l’agarico, et la mana celeste tanto celebrata da gli Ebrei, la
quale al mio giudicio è chiamata da Ippocrate cedromeli id est mel cedarinum, et da Galeno
eomeli id est Mel aereum, et drosomeli id est mel rosidum.”
it and enables fungi like agarico, which Aldrovandi believed to be the

equivalent of manna, to thrive. Aldrovandi’s remarks call to mind a vivid
tableau of tall, stately cedar trees shading the ancient Near East, while
its branches preserved deceased bodies and provided solace to families
in mourning, and its roots fertilized surrounding terrain, creating the
conditions necessary for fungi such as agarico to grow. The implication
of Aldrovandi’s research is clear: biblical events thought to be mirac-
ulous are explicable by research into natural history. As early as the
fifth century B CE , ancient medical writings strove to explain things in
natural terms and minimize supernatural intervention.101 Early modern
medical scholarship continued that tradition and amplified it. According
to Aldrovandi, Jesus’ body was preserved for several days in the tomb
because, like other impecunious Jews of his time, he was entombed in
a wood – cedar – that slowed decomposition. And manna was an espe-
cially nourishing type of mushroom that was fertilized by the cedar tree.
Aldrovandi’s investigations of biblical woods typically contain fewer
flights of fancy than his studies of manna and cedar. It is in his more
subdued writings that we are able to chart the reciprocal relationship
between natural science and biblical studies. His philological observa-
tions are the essence of his work on the Bible. Aldrovandi’s comments
on oak wood, for example, reveal how his botanical expertise quali-
fied him to translate the Bible more accurately. Additionally, the Bible’s
comments about oak and its various species accomplish far more than
Ezekiel’s homily about cedar: they describe the wood in naturalistic
language and enrich Aldrovandi’s acquaintance with a common, rather
than a rare, type of wood.
Aldrovandi occasionally contradicted himself, or at least offered evi-
dence that challenged his prior assertions. For example, after arguing that
Jesus’ cross was made of cedar, he stated that the cross was made from
oak, or ayla in Hebrew. But finding the precise term was another matter
entirely. As he often did, Aldrovandi opened Benito Arias Montano’s
polyglot Bible for assistance and informed his readers that “some, as
Arias Montano says in his Sacra Bibia, interpret it as olmo, and still oth-
ers as ilice, which seems to me to be the best translation.” Aldrovandi
101
Arnaldo Momigliano, “La storia tra medicina e retorica,” in Tra storia e storicismo (Pisa:
Nistri-Lischi, 1985), 11–24, 12.
went on to display his knowledge of the differences between these two

plants. “For we should not say that it is olmo, being the living type of
oak, bearing acorns, as does the querza. This [oak] is included among
the great and durable plants, of considerable age. Ordinarily its leaves
fall as is normal; I have never seen any type that is always green.”102
Once again his firsthand experience is crucial, but only insofar as it
is paired with textual learning. Oak trees are deciduous, Aldrovandi
points out, and “the nature of the oak, whose leaves fall, is to extend
its branches far and wide, whence derives an argument that this tree
denotes prosperity.” Two scriptural quotations buttress his argument:
“as Isaiah shows in chapter four, when he [Isaiah] says ‘as the tere-
binth tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast
their leaves [Isaiah 6:13]’”; Aldrovandi also invokes Amos: “by the
testimony of the prophet Amos, the querza shows great strength and
robustness ‘yet I destroyed the Amorite before them . . . he was strong as
the oaks.’”103 In Aldrovandi’s reading, the Bible contains not only met-
aphorical insight into the oak’s power but also accurate descriptions of
its deciduous nature.
Aldrovandi’s analysis of oak in the Bible demonstrates his knowledge
of Hebrew etymology and celebrates the ability of the Bible to clarify
the nature of plants. “What else does the basan signify,” Aldrovandi
avers, “if not the richest and most powerful? For the very name ayla
or alon in Hebrew means power and influence.”104 Aldrovandi quotes
102
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 51, De cruce, 1:112r: “Havendo di sopra parlato della querza del cui
legno credo sia stata fatta la S. Croce, chiamata dagli ebrei ‫ אלה‬ancorche alcuni come dice
l’Arrio Montano nella Sacra Bibia, interpretano olmo, altri ilice, il che pare ancora a me
essere molto megliore interpretatione, che non è a dire olmo, essendo l’elce specie di querza
et glandifera, come quella; la qual querza è annoverata fra le piante grande e dure et di lunga
età le cui foglie cascano la vernata per ordinariamente, ancora che io n’habbi osservato una
sorte, che perpetualmente verdeggia.”
103
Ibid., 112r–112v: “la natura della querza, le cui foglie cadono, è di stendere in larghezza i
rami suoi, onde hanno pigliato argomento di denotare prosperità, amplificatione di fame-
glia e populi, come mostra Esaia al capo quarto, quando dice: et erit in ostentionem sicut
terebinthus et sicut quercus quae expandit ramos suos. Gran forza, e robustezza mostra la
querza per testimonio del Profeta Amos al capo secondo ego autem exterminavi Amorrheum
à facie eorum cujus altitudo cedrorum altitudo ejus, et fortis ipse quasi quercus” (emphasis
in the original).
104
Ibid., 112v–113r: “La querza Basan che altro significa se non i piu potenti e richi percioche
il nome stesso hebraico ‫ אלה‬over ‫ אלון‬significa potenza, et estensione.” I have not been able to
find a definition of ‫ אלה‬or ‫ אלון‬in any fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Hebrew dictionary that
translates either term as “power” or “influence.”
Isaiah (2:13 and 1:30) and Zechariah (11:12) before observing that “the
querza [oak], losing its leaves, alludes to the people of a republic, being
ornamental and luxurious and filled with divine grace as Isaiah says
in the first chapter: ‘when you were like an oak tree losing its leaves.’”
Still, Aldrovandi was interested in nature in the Bible, and he quoted
scripture to inform his readers about the natural world, not politics.
“See how this prophet expresses the nature of our querza,” Aldrovandi
states, “whose properties and strength are very easily seen in the wood
of the holy cross, as we said above.”105 For Aldrovandi accurate readings
of scripture derived from a synthesis of natural philosophy and bibli-
cal studies. To Aldrovandi’s mind, the contributions of Hebraists like
Sebastian Münster and Benito Arias Montano were of scholarly value.
But only a natural philosopher who held plants in his hand, considered
their medical use, and pondered their meanings in a variety of languages
could truly assess the biblical text.
Conclusion
Ulisse Aldrovandi was motivated to investigate the natural world of the
Bible by a series of conversations with bishops and priests in his native
Bologna. Like his predecessor Amatus had done a generation before,
Aldrovandi used his expertise in natural philosophy to scrutinize the Bible.
Amatus, in his explication of Dioscorides, and Aldrovandi, in his reflec-
tions on various topics in natural philosophy, sharpened their reading of
the Bible and brought its natural world to life. Medical commentaries
in the second half of the sixteenth century, with their digressive tenden-
cies and propensity to supplement knowledge of one classical author
with selections from a wide variety of others, occasionally embraced
the Bible as an alternative source. In that process, the Bible itself was
subjected to closer readings. Sixteenth-century naturalists viewed scrip-
ture as a source not only for theological and doctrinal positions but
105
Ibid., 112r: “Però disse Esaia al capo secondo: super omnes quercus Basan: et Zacaria al
capo undecimo ululate quercus Basan. La querza, cascate, che lascian le foglie che cosa signi-
fica se non il popolo della repubblica essere d’ornamenti e commodi et divina gratia abban-
donato, come ben mostra Esaia nel capo primo, quando disse cum fueritis veluti quercus
defluentibus foliis. Ecco come da questo Profetta si esprime la natura della nostra querza.
Le proprietà della quale, e fortezza si vede molto bene convenire al legno della Santa Croce
come habbiamo detti di sopra” (emphasis in the original).
for historical and natural philosophical information as well. Amatus’s

Enarrationes on Dioscorides’ De materia medica is a fitting example of
this. Furthermore, just as the character of medical commentaries wel-
comed biblical analysis, debates regarding biblical translation and the
establishment of a reliable scriptural text inspired closer study of Holy
Writ and motivated those with linguistic facility to learn its original lan-
guages and put them to use in their natural philosophic pursuits. Ulisse
Aldrovandi, well known as a naturalist but unknown as a Hebraist,
exemplifies this trend. Commentaries on Dioscorides and miscellaneous
scientific investigations penned by Amatus and Aldrovandi embraced
biblical analysis. Aldrovandi’s studies of Pliny’s Natural History, in turn,
demonstrate how Hebraism facilitated scientific research.
2
Pliny, Papyrus, and the Bible
Several scholars in sixteenth-century Italy investigated writing practices

in the ancient Mediterranean world. To comprehend the nuances of
writing technologies in the distant past, early modern scholars looked
for information in a variety of texts, including the Bible.
One aspect of scribal culture in the Bible that attracted Italian natural-
ists such as Ulisse Aldrovandi and his peers was the provenance, culti-
vation, and use of papyrus. For Melchior Guilandinus, for example, the
prefect of Padua’s botanical garden, papyrus became the subject of an
entire book.1 For the Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, that plant
assumed a prominent role in his unpublished history of ancient librar-
ies, books, and writing technologies.2 Renaissance humanists besides
Guilandinus and Aldrovandi were particularly interested in paper, papy-
rus, and ancient forms of writing. Years ago, Charles Perrat explored how
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century humanists, mostly French and Italian,
scrutinized mentions of papyrus in classical texts, collected samples of
it, and flocked to libraries, museums, and botanical gardens that pos-
sessed papyrus specimens.3 More recently Anthony Grafton has written
about divergences of opinion among sixteenth-century philologists on
1
Melchioris Guilandini Papyrus, hoc est commentarius in tria C. Plinii maioris de papyro
capita. Accessit Hieronymi Mercurialis repugnantia, qua pro Galeno strenue pugnatur.
Item Melchioris Guilandini assertio sententiae in Galenum a se pronunciatae (Venice: M.
Antonio Ulmus, 1572).
2
BUB, Ms. Aldrovandi 83 (2 vols.), Bibliologia.
3
Charles Perrat, “Les humanistes amateurs de papyrus,” Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes
109 (1951): 173–92.
71
the subject of papyrus in classical texts.4 These contributions underscore

the fascination ancient scribal culture held for humanists in Renaissance
Europe.
We know less, however, about the overlapping fascination with the
material aspects of ancient scribal culture and biblical natural history in
early modern Europe. That fascination had roots in late antiquity. The
Mishnah, which was compiled in the second century and quickly became
one of rabbinic Judaism’s foundational texts, emphasizes the importance
of and the magic inherent in the Bible’s writing implements. At several
key points in the biblical narrative, God communicates by means of
inscription, and aspects of that writing process attracted scholarly inter-
est in late antiquity. The Mishnaic tractate Avot, for example, states that
ten things were created at twilight on the eve of the Sabbath. Of those
ten items, three concerned writing: writing itself, the script of the Ten
Commandments, and the tablets upon which they were written.5 The
traditional belief that the stone upon which the Ten Commandments
were inscribed was diaphanous and its script legible from either side was
of special interest to many scholars. And not only early modern Jews,
who traditionally studied tractate Avot every year between the festivals
of Passover and Shavuot, were familiar with this particular rabbinic tra-
dition; Christian scholars had access to it as well. Avot was included in
Paul Fagius’s 1541 Latin translation of the Mishnah.6
4
Anthony Grafton, “Rhetoric, Philology and Egyptomania in the 1570s: J. J. Scaliger’s
Invective against M. Guilandinus’s Papyrus,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 42 (1979): 167–94.
5
Mishnah Avot, 5:6.
6
Pirke Avot. Sententiae vere elegantes, piae, mireque, cum ad linguam discendam tum ani-
mum pietate excolendum utiles, veterum sapientum Hebraeorum, quas ‫ פרקי אבות‬id est
Capitula, aut si mavis Apophthegmata Patrum nominant: in Latinum versae, scholiisque
illustratae: per Paulum Fagium in gratiam studiosorum linguae sanctae (Isny: Paul Fagius,
1541). Twelve Hebrew books were printed in Isny during the sixteenth century. See Stephen
G. Burnett, “Christian Hebrew Printing in the Sixteenth Century: Printers, Humanism and
the Impact of the Reformation,” Helmantica 51:154 (January–April 2000): 13–42, 18. For
more on Fagius’s interests in postclassical Hebrew, see Burnett, From Christian Hebraism
to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth
Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 134–68; for Fagius and his press at Isny, see Burnett,
“Christian Hebrew Printing in the Sixteenth Century,” 26. There were at least two other
Latin editions of Pirke Avot available before 1570: one by Sebastian Lepusculus and one by
Paul Weidner. Lepusculus’s translation was appended to Iosippus de Bello Iudaico deinde
decem Iudaeorum captivitates (Basel: Henrichus Petri, 1559); see Joseph Prijs, Die Basler
hebraïschen Drucke 1492–1866 (Olten: Urs Graf-Verlag, 1964), 151–3, for a description of
Pliny, Papyrus, and the Bible 73
But Aldrovandi and Guilandinus were not concerned with magic and
miracles; they were interested in history and material culture. In the 1570s,
Aldrovandi and Guilandinus probed the Bible for evidence of papyrus’s
origins and early purposes. Their analyses of papyrus indicate a larger,
more complicated intellectual project: using biblical verses, removed from
their context and stripped of their liturgical and theological significance,
to clarify and emend other ancient writings, in this case Pliny’s Natural
History. There are numerous disputes about Pliny in the unpublished writ-
ings of Ulisse Aldrovandi and in the published, but rarely studied ones of
Melchior Guilandinus. The prominent role of the Bible in those disputes
illuminates connections between biblical studies and natural philosophy.
For Aldrovandi and Guilandinus, using the Bible to adjudicate disputes
about the Natural History’s accuracy led them to assess not only an august
pagan authority but translations of the Bible itself.
In the sixteenth century, many commentaries were written on Pliny’s
Natural History, an encyclopedic work from the late first century C E .
In the 1570s and 1580s, papyrus and its use in the ancient world com-
manded the attention of several Italian naturalists. Since Pliny’s Natural
History offered sixteenth-century scholars key information about papy-
rus, it was a fitting subject for analysis and an appropriate point of
departure for a study of that plant.
Renaissance natural philosophers asked two sorts of questions about
Pliny’s work: lexical and evaluative. From the late fifteenth century
onward, scholars worked to edit and publish the Natural History. To do
so, they had to ensure that they understood the words Pliny used and
recognized the objects in nature to which they referred. They also strove
to evaluate the quality and accuracy of the information Pliny provided.
For example, Pliny claimed that papyrus was first cultivated at a precise
point in the history of the ancient Mediterranean: during the reign of
Alexander the Great (fourth century B C E ). Additionally, Pliny stated that
paper was not commonly used until the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus,
in the middle of the third century B C E . According to Aldrovandi and
Guilandinus, Pliny was wrong on both counts. Indeed, the stated goal
this text. For Weidner, see Mishnah Pirke Abot sententiae hebraicae ad vitae institutionem
perutiles breviter explicatae et praeclarissimis dictis tam Sacram quam aliarum Scripturarum
illustratae a Paulo Weidnero (Vienna: Michaël Zimmerman, 1563). I would like to thank
Professor Burnett for this last reference.
of Guilandinus’s book was to persuade the “stiff-necked reader” and

“refute Varro,” Pliny’s original source, who proposed that nothing was
written on paper before Ptolemy Philadelphus.7
One of the ways in which Aldrovandi and Guilandinus assessed the
accuracy of statements like these was to compare Pliny’s account of papy-
rus’s early cultivation to that contained in the Bible. For those who were
versed not only in booklore and natural philosophy but also in biblical
languages, the antiquarian study of ancient writing technologies came to
embrace the Bible as a source. In his Bibliologia, Aldrovandi used the
Bible to write a definitive history of book culture in the ancient world.
And in his commentary on Pliny, Guilandinus carefully examined scrip-
ture to gather as much information as possible about papyrus. Using the
Bible in this manner meant treating it as an auxiliary text: they scrutinized
its language and narrative in order to evaluate ancient pagan works of
natural philosophy. When Aldrovandi and Guilandinus studied the Bible
in Hebrew and Greek, their intention was not to perform biblical analy-
sis; it was to understand Pliny’s Natural History and the ancient world
it described. To write a definitive natural history of papyrus, Aldrovandi
and Guilandinus needed access to the Bible in its original languages. They
knew that translations, especially the Vulgate, introduced inaccuracies
when rendering the natural terminology of scripture into other languages.
These investigations into the natural world of the Bible had a sec-
ondary result. They did more than help Aldrovandi and Guilandinus
understand the cultivation and applications of papyrus in the ancient
Mediterranean; they clarified difficult terms in the Bible itself. Discussions
of Pliny’s reliability widened the scope of biblical studies and multiplied
the applications of sacred learning at the end of the sixteenth century.
In effect, Aldrovandi and Guilandinus helped expand the classical canon
to include the Bible. They pioneered new, nontheological ways of read-
ing scripture. In turn, the admission of biblical knowledge into scientific
texts changed natural philosophy as well. It broadened the horizons of
scientific writing at this time and created another venue in which biblical
commentary could develop and diversify in the late Renaissance.
Guilandinus, Papyrus, 129: “Ut vel unus hic locus sufficere possit non moroso et obstipa
7
cervice lectori, ad refellendum Varronem, fidem suam interponentem non ante Ptolemaeum
Philadelphum in chartis esse scriptitatum.”
Melchior Guilandinus
Melchior Wieland, or Guilandinus as he was known south of the Alps,
was a botanist of international reputation. Shortly after his death, Luigi
Lollino, a learned cleric of Belluno, penned a laudatory biography of
him, which remains unpublished.8 Though many details of his life are
sketchy, a few basic facts are beyond dispute.9 Born in Königsberg around
1520, Guilandinus began his studies in that city before moving to Rome
as a young man. Eventually he relocated to Padua, where he made the
acquaintance of Gabriele Fallopia, one of that university’s most accom-
plished physicians. Under Fallopia’s supervision, he “diligently and inge-
niously made progress in all areas of learning.”10 Having earned the
financial support of Marino Cavalli, a reformer of Padua’s curriculum,
he traveled throughout the Near East, including Palestine and Egypt, to
study botany.11 During his return journey he was captured by pirates and
had to be ransomed by the Venetian authorities.12 In September 1561, he
succeeded Luigi Anguillara as the director of Padua’s botanical garden.
At that time he was appointed to a chair of “lecture and demonstra-
tion of medicinal herbs” at the University of Padua. Apart from a few
practical inventions, including an irrigation machine that he developed
8
Aloysio (Luigi) Lollino, “Melchior Guillandinus stirpium medicarum in Gymnasio Patavino
Nomenclator,” in his Vite di Francesco Piccolomini, Jacopo Zabarella, Tommaso Peregrino,
Melchiore Guillandino, Antonio Riccobono, Girolamo Mercuriali, Guido Pancirola,
Faustino Sommo, Giuseppe Molezio, Bastesiano Monticolo, Professori nell’Univ. di Padova.
Belluno, Biblioteca civica, Ms. 505, 55v–60v. On Lollino, see DBI 65:449–53.
9
The following is based partly on Loris Premuda’s entry “Melchior Wieland,” in Dictionary
of Scientific Biography 14: 335–6. See also R. de Visiani, L’orto botanico di Padova (Padua,
1842), 9–12; and G. B. de Toni, “Melchiorre Guilandinus,” in A. Mieli, ed., Gli Scienziati
Italiani I (Rome: Casa Editrice Leonardo da Vinci, 1933), 73–6, which has the most tho-
rough list of older scholarship on Guilandinus (esp. 76). In addition, see G. E. Ferrari, “Le
opere a stampa del Guilandinus,” in Giuseppe Bellini, ed., Libri e stampatori in Padova
(Padua: Tipografia Antoniana, 1959), 377–463. None of these scholars mentioned Lollino’s
biography.
10
Lollino, “Melchior Guillandinus stirpium medicarum in Gymnasio Patavino Nomenclator,”
55v: “Italiam pervenit ad Gabrielem Falopium, medicorum sui aevi principem, apud quem
sedulitate et ingenio in omni litterarum genere adeo profecit, ut brevi homo exterus scythi-
cumque adhuc nescio quid olens, veluti Anacharsis alter, inter praesantes eruditione viros,
quibus tunc Academia florebat, inclaresceret hospitis sui artes aemulatus.”
11
Ibid.: “quod dum agit, cupido illum, ut erat laboris inexhausti, incessit balsami, casamique
et iunci odorati noscendi causâ Palaestinam, et Solis orientis conscia loca peragrare.”
12
Ibid., 55v–60r.
in 1575, Guilandinus published very little.13 In 1557 a collection of

letters entitled De stirpibus . . . epistolae was published.14 The next year
he wrote a short Apologia against Mattioli, and in 1572 he published
Papyrus, a commentary on the chapters in Pliny’s Natural History that
describe that plant.15 He also wrote two brief works that were published
posthumously: a list of synonyms of plant names in the Paduan botan-
ical garden and a report on the plants of the wealthy Venetian Pietro
Antonio Michiel.16 Guilandinus died on 18 January 1589.
Modern evaluations of Guilandinus have not been favorable; nev-
ertheless, his career and writings merit further study. Loris Premuda,
writing in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, summed up scholarly
consensus on Guilandinus when he opined that Guilandinus “left no
writings of particular value.”17 Owing to the influence of comments like
these, very little modern scholarship treats Guilandinus in any depth. But
Guilandinus was a well-respected botanist at Italy’s leading university.
Lollino’s biography of him is included in a collection of reminiscences
about illustrious Paduan professors, including Francesco Piccolomini,
Jacopo Zabarella, Antonio Riccoboni, and Girolamo Mercuriale.18
13
Premuda, “Melchior Wieland.” Premuda does not specify what those inventions were.
14
De stirpium aliquot nominibus vetustis ac novis, quae multis iam saeculis vel ignorarunt
medici, vel de eis dubitarunt . . . epistolae II (Basel: apud Nicolaum Episcopus Juniorem),
1557. It was reprinted in P. A. Mattioli’s Epistolarum libri V (Lyon: apud Cesarem Farinam,
1564). The collection of letters was also published in 1558 under the title De stirpibus ali-
quot epistolae V (Padua: Gratiosus Perchacinus, 1558).
15
Apologia adversus Petrum Andream Mattiolum liber primus, qui inscribitur Theon (Padua:
Gratiosus Perchacinus, 1558).
16
Johann Georg Schenck, Hortus Patavinus, cui accessere Melchioris Guilandini coniecta-
nea synonymica plantarum (Frankfurt: Johann Theodor de Bry, 1608); Judicium Melchioris
Guilandini de quibusdam plantis horti Petri Ant. Michaelis, published in G. B. de Toni,
“Contributo alla conoscenza delle relazioni del patrizio veneziano Pietro Antonio Michiel
con Ulisse Aldrovandi,” Memorie dell’Accademia di scienze, lettere ed arti Modena (series
3) 9 (1908): 21–70.
17
Premuda, “Melchior Wieland,” 336.
18
For information on Piccolomini and Riccobono, see N. Jardine, “Keeping Order in the
School of Padua: Jacopo Zabarella and Francesco Piccolomini on the Offices of Philosophy,”
in Daniel A. di Liscia, Eckhard Kessler, and Charlotte Methuen, eds., Method and Order
in Renaissance Philosophy of Nature: The Aristotle Commentary Tradition (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 1997), 183–209; Heikki Mikkeli, “The Foundations of an Autonomous Natural
Philosophy,” in ibid., 211–28. Riccobono was the author of perhaps the best-known early
modern work on the University of Padua. See his De gymnasio patavino . . . commentario-
rum libri sex (Padua: apud Bolzetam, 1598). On Zabarella, see Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle
and the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 10. On Mercuriale,
see DBI 73:620–5.
Furthermore, Guilandinus maintained relationships with prominent

physicians such as Gabriele Fallopia and learned theologians such as
Girolamo Vielmi. He discussed the natural world of the Bible with both
and seamlessly integrated biblical analysis into his examinations of nat-
ural history. Guilandinus’s work is a complement to Aldrovandi’s and
shows that Aldrovandi’s tendency to read the Bible alongside pagan nat-
ural philosophy was not exceptional; it was representative of a broader
trend in the late Renaissance.
Aldrovandi, Guilandinus, and Pliny’s NATURAL HISTORY
The debate about Pliny’s Natural History that Aldrovandi and

Guilandinus entered into in the 1570s and 1580s was not new. Beginning
at the end of the fifteenth century, European naturalists debated the mer-
its of Pliny’s encyclopedia and its proper application to humanist learn-
ing and medical science.19 In the fifteenth century the Natural History
was known as a text valuable for its many Latin words: because of its
immense topical range, it provided rich vocabulary for Renaissance
humanists to assimilate into their writings. In the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, scholars tried to establish its scientific accuracy,
or lack thereof. Nearly everybody agreed that new and more reliable
editions of Pliny were needed. But they disagreed on the problem with
existing texts. Some thought generations of editors and copyists had dis-
torted Pliny’s original intention.20 Others argued that Pliny himself did
not understand science as well as he might have.21 Ultimately the debate
centered on whether Pliny’s book should be understood as a linguistic or
a scientific resource. Some scholars – chiefly linguists and philologists –
felt that the copiousness and diversity of Natural History’s vocabulary
19
Charles G. Nauert Jr., “Humanists, Scientists, and Pliny: Changing Approaches to a Classical
Author,” American Historical Review 84:1 (February 1979): 72–85.
20
The chief proponent of this argument was Pandolfo Collenuccio. See M. Santoro, “La
polemica pliniana fra Leoniceno e Collenuccio,” Filologia Romanza 3 (1956): 162–205;
G. Pozzi’s introduction to Hermolai Barbari Castigationes Plinianae et in Pomponium
Melam (Padua: Antenore, 1973), cxxvii–cxxviii; F. Kudlien, “Zwei medizinische Polemiken
am Ende des 15. Jahrunderts,” Gesnerus 22 (1965): 85–92.
21
The main advocate of this line of thinking was Niccolò Leoniceno. See, in addition to
Nauert, “Humanists, Scientists, and Pliny,” Vivian Nutton, “The Rise of Medical Humanism:
Ferrara, 1464–1555,” Renaissance Studies 11:1 (1997): 2–19.
was its chief virtue. Physicians and botanists, on the other hand, held that
the book’s identification and analysis of medicinal products was its best
asset. Whatever their position, scholars could agree with Guilandinus’s
observation that there are “many very obscure places in Pliny” that came
down to sixteenth-century scholars “not in the [true] words of Pliny but
in the words of many other authors.”22 Whichever side of these battle
lines a Renaissance scholar stood on, he agreed that it was necessary to
draw from other works to understand Pliny.
Another point of agreement that united sixteenth-century students of
Pliny was their belief that it was possible to restore the text, as Guilandinus
put it, to its “old dignity.” They disagreed only on the method of doing
so. Guilandinus contended that other scholars may “not without due
cause substitute one [word] for another or one topic for another topic by
using another Greek or Latin writer.”23 Guilandinus’s model for doing
this was Niccolò Leoniceno (1428–1524), a physician and philologist
from Ferrara who dominated Italian medical scholarship, especially its
philo-Hellenic fields, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.24
Guilandinus, as well as others who attended Italian medical faculties in
the 1540s and 1550s, was steeped in Leoniceno’s writings and sympa-
thetic to his intellectual perspectives. Though he never openly acknowl-
edged Leoniceno’s importance, Aldrovandi was one of his followers, too.
Leoniceno’s influence on sixteenth-century medical scholarship, which
has been duly noted and traced by historians of medicine, also extended
into the realms of classical philology and biblical studies.
More than any other scholar, Niccolò Leoniceno instigated the acri-
monious debate about Pliny’s reliability. In his On the Errors of Pliny
and Many Others in Medicine,25 he insisted that Pliny erred in his use
22
Guilandinus, Papyrus, sig**r.
23
Ibid., *4v: “Tamen non idem etiam protinus iudicium faciendum erit de Plinio, Solino, et
caeteris id genus scriptoribus, qui quod res in natura existentes non carmine, sed soluta
oratione, nec fabulose sue ficte, sed historica fide, et ut sunt, persequuti fuerunt, possunt non
inepte alter per alterum, et alii multi per illos, et vicissim illi per alios multos cum Latinos,
tum Graecos, qui idem argumentum tractavere, instaurari, atque in Veterum dignitatem,
integritatemque restitui.”
24
The best introduction to Leoniceno’s work is Daniela Mugnai Carrara, “Profilo di Nicolò
Leoniceno,” Interpres 2 (1979): 169–212.
25
Niccolò Leoniceno, De Plinii et aliorum in medicina erroribus (Ferrara: Laurentius de
Rubeis, 1492). I have used De Plinii et plurium aliorum medicorum in medicina erroribus,
of medicinal products for two reasons: he did not understand the Greek
authors he read, and he lacked firsthand knowledge of the materials
he was writing about. Ermolao Barbaro, whose position was contrary
to Leoniceno’s, blamed errors in Pliny’s text on his commentators and
editors, not on Pliny himself. Leoniceno’s lasting contribution to this
debate was to insist that Pliny’s text should be emended with evidence
from other ancient scientific texts – especially Dioscorides, Galen, and
Paul of Aegina. The belief that scholars could improve their knowledge
of unreliable ancient texts by consulting other, more reliable ones would
have a significant impact on biblical studies. Followers of Leoniceno
throughout the sixteenth century applied two of his scholarly tenets –
that things are more important than words and that classical texts could
reinforce each other – to their reading of the Bible. Because of Leoniceno
and his influence, Aldrovandi and Guilandinus felt justified in borrowing
from other classical texts to amplify the meaning of the Bible, as well as
in their use of biblical passages to illuminate other ancient texts, such as
Pliny’s Natural History.
For Leoniceno, to study ancient botany, and natural science more
broadly, was to focus on things rather than on words. “To philosophize
truthfully seems to me,” Leoniceno intoned, “to battle with barbarians
not on the subject of words but on things that pertain to the health
of many men.”26 Peter Dilg has articulated how Leoniceno’s primary
goal was not to restore the text of Pliny to a pristine, uncorrupted state
but rather to discover the truth about actual substances used by ancient
physicians.27 That was a sentiment that Aldrovandi and Guilandinus
could embrace. In fact, Guilandinus went so far as to say that he rejected
and dismissed quibbles about “vain opinions” and instead preferred to
“seek the truth about things.” And one of Leoniceno’s later followers,
libri quator, in Nicolai Leoniceni Vicentini, philosophi et medici clarisssimi, opuscula (Basel:
Cratandrum, 1532), 1–61.
26
See “Nicolaus Leonicenus Hieronymo Menochio Lucensi philosopho ac medico praestantis-
simo s. d.,” in Leoniceno, De Plinii . . . erroribus libri quator, book 4, in Opuscula, 53v: “hoc
sane mihi videtur vere philosophari, non de vocabulis, sed de rebus ad hominum salutem
plurimum necessariis cum barbaris decertare.”
27
Peter Dilg, “Die botanische Kommentarliteratur italiens um 1500 und ihr Einfluss auf
Deutschland,” in August Buck and Otto Herding, eds., Der Kommentar in der Renaissance
(Boppard: Boldt, 1975), 225–52, esp. 236–9.
the French physician Jacques Daléchamps, gave voice to this sentiment

in his 1587 introduction to Pliny’s Natural History:
My mind has a natural proclivity to give precedence to those things that

contribute to the understanding of the material rather than to those that
are investigated and determined concerning the beauty and eloquence of
speech, because I think that an understanding of the inner meaning of
things is more useful for a wise man than vigor of expression and eloquent
beauty.28
Throughout this debate, and especially in the language that Leoniceno

and his followers used, the word res, or things, echoes in readers’ ears.29
The emphasis of Leoniceno and his followers on res as opposed to
verba is important in and of itself. But equally if not more important was
his belief that the sorts of investigations he undertook should be applied
to other fields of study. “It would not be an arduous task,” Leoniceno
insisted in his work on Pliny, if “known things [familiaria] were applied
not only to medicine but to some other uses as well.”30 And, in fact,
those “familiaria,” or things known to be true, do really exist; they are
not irretrievable ghosts of a distant past. “Things that exist in nature,”
Leoniceno’s follower Guilandinus reflected, “are not employed by means
of incantation, or set loose by speech, fable, or fiction, but exist according
to faith in history, and, as such, may be employed.”31 Guilandinus insisted
that the natural products that Pliny and his contemporaries wrote about
could be identified and used in the medical practice of his own day.
28
Jacques Daléchamps, C. Plinii Secundi historiae mundi libri XXXVII (Lyon: Bartholomeaus
Honoratus, 1587), 3r: “primum igitur, ex quo studia humaniora degustavi, ea mihi fuit inge-
nita mentis propensio, ut quae ad rerum cognitionem faciunt iis anteponerem, quae ad orna-
tum et copiam orationis quaeruntur ac comparantur, quod arbitrarer interiorem literarum
scientiam homini cordato magis convenire, quam dicendi vim ac facundam venustatem.” I
have used the translation in Nauert, “Humanists, Scientists, and Pliny,” 85.
29
On this theme, see Eckhard Kessler and Ian Maclean, eds., Res et verba in der Renaissance
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz in Kommission, 2002).
30
Leoniceno, De Plinii . . . erroribus libri quator, book 1, in Opuscula, 5v: “neque enim impen-
dio arduum esset, si non omnia, saltem earum pleraque cognoscere, quae adeo familiaria
sunt ut non modo ad medicinam, sed ad alios quoque usus aliquando adhibeantur.”
31
Guilandinus, Papyrus, *4v: “qui quod res in natura existentes non carmine, sed soluta ora-
tione, nec fabulose seu ficte, sed historica fide, et ut sunt, persequuti fuerunt.” On fides
historica, see Anthony Grafton, “The Identities of History in Early Modern Europe: Prelude
to a Study of the Artes Historicae,” in Gianna Pomata and Nancy Siraisi, eds., Historia:
Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005),
41–74, 41, 49.
Given this emphasis on the medical application of Pliny’s writings,

Leoniceno’s quest to understand the Roman natural philosopher was
not an empty intellectual exercise; it was a pressing concern undertaken
for the benefit of others. Guilandinus said as much when he gushed that
he was “extremely desirous for the public good.”32 Because the Natural
History mentioned scores of medicinal products, it was advantageous
for doctors to read Pliny closely.33 Long before Guilandinus took up the
topic, Leoniceno lamented that “there are very few who read Pliny for
his medical teachings; more read him for his vocabulary and – it cannot
be denied – his divine eloquence.”34 Since doctors prescribed items listed
in Pliny’s book without knowing the text, it was of utmost importance
that they know which medicaments the author actually referred to. “It
is not without great danger,” Leoniceno wrote, that doctors prescribe
medical products from ancient writings without knowing precisely what
they are. To have full control over those products, many doctors grew
herbs in their own botanical gardens. As Leoniceno put it, “There is no
one who does not have [those drugs] in their botanical garden, and who
does not use them frequently.”35 Pliny’s text had clear medical appli-
cations, and those applications demanded precise identification of its
terminology.
For Leoniceno, in order to correct Pliny it was necessary to seek out
other classical texts. Leoniceno believed that, because Pliny was a ven-
erated writer, the stakes were high in criticizing him. Writing to Angelo
Poliziano, the dedicatee of his De Plinii . . . in medicina erroribus opus,
he noted that he did not approach Pliny “with rash judgment” but rather
with “most firm reasons.”36 And he insisted in a letter to Poliziano that
32
Guilandinus, Papyrus, sig**r: “quoniam quidem mihi publicae utilitates cupidissimo non
aggrediendi voluntas defuerit, sed perficiendi facultas.”
33
Between books 20 and 34 of the Natural History alone, more than nine hundred medical
products are listed, more than in Dioscorides or Galen. See Giovanna Ferrari, L’esperienza
del passato: Alessandro Benedetti filologo e medico umanista (Florence: L. S. Olschki,
1996), 177.
34
Leoniceno, De Plinii . . . erroribus libri quator, book 3, in Opuscula, 22v: “paucissimi enim
sunt qui Plinium propter medicinas legant, plures propter vocabula et divinam, quod negari
non potest, elocutionem.”
35
Ibid., 5v: “quum tamen nemo sit qui illa in horto suo non habeat, ac non eisdem frequentis-
sime utatur.”
36
Ibid., 2v: “pauca tamen e multis hoc in loco censui aperienda, ut intelligas me non temerario
iudicio sed certissimis rationibus adductum, ut existimarem Plinium ita in haederae descrip-
tione, quemadmodum in multis aliis ad medicinam pertinentibus aberrasse.”
the way to do this properly was to find complementary passages in other

classical authors. Leoniceno explained that Pliny was often mistaken, as
he was in his description of marubio.37 “Dioscorides, Galen, and Paul,”
Leoniceno observed, “wrote about many herbs and stalks with leaves
similar to marubio, which Pliny rendered [incorrectly] as prasso rather
than prassio.”38 Elsewhere Leoniceno bemoaned the fact that “many
[things] lie hidden from us, and if we thus endeavor to read the books of
the ancients . . . in this manner, we ought not to ignore other authors who
show much ostentation but little utility.”39 In other words, even when a
topic seemed irrelevant, it was important for Niccolò Leoniceno to seek
out other authors who might amplify his understanding of a given topic,
regardless of their other merits or demerits. For example, Leoniceno lam-
basted Pliny for confusing the plants hedera and cithon. In his remarks
on hedera, Pliny distinguished between the male and female forms of
the plant and stated that both had a flower “like a wild rose.” That
description of hedera did not correspond to the works of “Theophrastus,
Dioscorides, or any man of weighty authority.” But, Leoniceno argued,
that distinction did apply to cithon. Pliny erred because the Greek words
for hedera and cithon (kissos and kisthos, respectively) were so similar
that the Roman naturalist simply mixed them up.40 Leoniceno used his
encyclopedic knowledge of ancient botanical texts, and his skills as a
Hellenist, to point out one of Pliny’s egregious mistakes.
37
On marubio in pre-Linnean nomenclature, see Caspar Bauhin, Pinax theatrum botanicum
(Basel: Impensis Johannis Regis, 1671 [1623]), 229 and 236, where marubio, or marrubium,
is a translation of πράδιον. Dioscorides discusses this plant in book 3, chaps. 119–20.
38
Leoniceno, De Plinii . . . erroribus, book 1, in Opuscula, 2r: “multas herbas ac frutices foliis
marubio similibus scribunt Dioscorides, Galenus ac Paulus, quas omnes Plinius non prassio,
id est marubio, sed prasso, id est porro, folia tradit habere similia.” According to Leoniceno,
the correct translation for marubio is prasio, which comes from the Greek πράσιον, or white
horehound, an herb. See Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1991 [1879]), s.v. prasion. The “Paul” Leoniceno refers to is Paul of Aegina, a seventh-
century Byzantine physician whose works were available in several editions by the late
fifteenth century.
39
Leoniceno, De Plinii . . . erroribus libri quator, book 1, in Opuscula, 5r–v: “multa nos latent,
quae si veterum libros ita legendos censeremus, sicuti Calculatores, Iacobos, Conciliatores,
Plusquam commentatores reliquosque huiuscemodi autores, in quibus plurimum ostentatio-
nis, minimum utilitatis, non ignoraremus.”
40
Ibid., 13r–15r. Brian Ogilvie discusses this passage from Leoniceno in his The Science of
Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2006), 127–8.
For Leoniceno and his followers, a reliable way to ensure accuracy

in reading Pliny was to be an expert in Greek philology, especially that
branch concerned with medicine. Since Pliny had borrowed many terms
from Greek texts, it was essential for the student of Pliny to know the
sources from which he drew. Vivian Nutton has described the crucial
importance Leoniceno assigned to Greek, and Daniela Mugnai Carrara
has documented the many Greek manuscripts in Leoniceno’s library.41
Leoniceno insisted that one had to know Greek in order to study Pliny:
What they should do in this matter, since they have never pored over med-
ical studies, nor the authoritative works of Greek physicians, to which I
adhere in my opinions worthy of confirmation, or if they at last began to
read them, since they do not know Greek, indeed they cannot understand
one word unless those things which were impudently edited under their
name were taught them by other people. Even though they do not seem to
have composed anything for themselves, they fight over Pliny with quarrels
and reproaches.42
Insistence on the importance of Greek underlay not only Leoniceno’s

work but that of Melchior Guilandinus and Ulisse Aldrovandi.
From Pliny to the Bible: Leoniceno’s Legacy

in the Later Sixteenth Century
By the end of the sixteenth century, finding complementary passages to
supplement an understanding of Pliny meant not only seeking out other
texts of pagan origin but also exploring the Bible as well as patristic and
rabbinic literature. Melchior Guilandinus’s work on Pliny provides a good
example of this tendency. At one point in his Papyrus, Guilandinus cites
41
Nutton, “The Rise of Medical Humanism”; Mugnai Carrara, “Profilo di Nicolò Leoniceno.”
42
Leoniceno, De Plinii . . . erroribus libri quator, book 2, in Opuscula 13v: “Quid enim ipsi
agerent, quum neque medicinae studiis unquam incubuissent, neque graecorum medicorum
autoritates, quas ego in meis sententiis confirmandis adhibueram, unquam legissent, aut
si nunc demum legere inciperent, quoniam graecas litteras ignorarent, nec unum quidem
verbum possent intelligere nisi ab aliis illa docerentur, quae sub suo nomine erant impu-
denter aedituri et, ne nihil de suo interseruisse viderentur, iurgiis atque conviciis pro Plinio
contenderent.”
passages in Cicero and Livy concerning the use of writing implements

in the classical world. And then, seamlessly, Guilandinus quotes the
Deuterocanonical Bible: “In the first book of Maccabees, in chapters 8
and 14, we read that he rewrote [the epistle] on brass tablets, first to the
Romans and then to the Spartiates, which they sent to Jerusalem in order
to establish friendship and fellowship with them.”43 For Guilandinus, the
canon of classical sources included the Bible: he commented on biblical
paraphernalia as comfortably as he did on pagan writing implements.
Moreover, Guilandinus invoked the Bible not as an inerrant authority
that stood apart from and above the rest of classical literature but as a
source simultaneously sacred and historical that could confirm his con-
tention about the antiquity of writing.
Italian natural philosophers who sought out biblical support for
their arguments were not satisfied to quote the Latin Bible; they con-
sistently reached for Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic versions. Melchior
Guilandinus and Ulisse Aldrovandi personify this tendency to reach past
the Vulgate and toward the Septuagint and the Hebrew original when
they looked for biblical proof texts. Though not a Hebraist, Guilandinus
in his discussion of the word byblus sought out a Greek word and a rab-
binic interpretation to understand a biblical verse, which in this case has
nothing to do with the topic of books or writing. “We read in Ezekiel
chapter 8,” Guilandinus noted, “‘Behold, the women sat there crying
for Adonidis.’ [Scripture] wants to say that it was idolatry celebrated
in honor of Adonidis. For Adonidis, the Septuagint has Thammous,
which is a Hebrew term.” Guilandinus sought out a Greek version of
scripture to understand the particulars of this biblical verse. But he was
not content to know that Thammous was a Hebrew term; he wished to
know what its precise associations were. So he turned to Maimonides.
43
Guilandinus, Papyrus, 60–1: “M. Tullius scribens in Catilinam ait aera legum in Capitolio
fuisse tacta de coelo, et liquefacta. Livius quoque decadis quartae libro 3 memorat con-
sulta olim fuisse relata in aedem Cereris ad aediles, et decadis primae libro 2 faedus ictum
cum Latinis fuisse insculptum in aenea columna. Sed et in primo Machabaeorum capiti-
bus 8 et 14 legimus tum Romanos, tum Spartiatas rescripsisse Iudaeis tabulis aereis, quas
Hierosolymam miserunt de stabilienda cum eis amicitia et societate.” One such passage may
indeed be found in 1 Maccabees 8:22, “Et hoc rescriptum est quod rescripserunt in tabulis
æreis, et miserunt in Hierusalem, ut esset apud eos ibi memoriale pacis et societatis.” The
other is from chapter 12, not 14. See 1 Maccabees 12:1–2, “et vidit Ionathas quia tempus
eum iuvat, et elegit viros, et misit eos Romam statuere et renovare cum eis amicitiam. Et ad
Spartas, et ad alia loca misit epistolas secundum eandem formam.”
“Rabbi Moses of Corduba” informed Guilandinus that Thammous was

a prophet of the Zabites.44 Recourse to a Greek Bible translation and
then to a medieval Jewish commentator helped Guilandinus understand
a biblical verse with greater accuracy.
Guilandinus’s colleague Ulisse Aldrovandi was even more explicit
about the problems inherent in consulting the Latin Bible. The Bible
was “finally translated into the Latin language much later,” Aldrovandi
reminded his readers. He also informed them that Latin was the least
elevated of the ancient tongues.45 When studying scripture, he sug-
gested, it was best to go back to Greek and Hebrew if at all possible.
In order to truly know what the Bible said, it was imperative to read it
in its original languages. Aldrovandi often sent his readers back to the
Hebrew and Greek versions of scripture, as he did in a passage in which
he wanted to emphasize that the Ten Commandments were given to
Moses on stone tablets.46 And in a related comment about engraving and
writing, Aldrovandi quoted the book of Job [19:23], which mentions
books “sculpted in stone.” The Vulgate Bible has “flint” for stone, but
Aldrovandi quoted the Greek, which has “lead or stone”– a more faith-
ful rendering to Aldrovandi’s mind.47 Emphasizing that the Vulgate did
not accurately convey the true meaning of the biblical verse, Aldrovandi
quoted the Septuagint to support his point about engraving practices in
the ancient world.
It was a short jump from bypassing the Vulgate and seeking out ear-
lier, more authoritative versions of scripture to criticizing the Vulgate’s
44
Guilandinus, Papyrus, 32: “Unde apud Ezechielem prophetam capite VIII legitur: Ecce sede-
bant ibi mulieres plangentes Adonidem. Ubi intelligi vult fuisse idololatriam celebratam in
honorem Adonidis. Septuaginta ibi pro Adonide habent Θαμμούζ vocem Hebraicam.” See
ibid., 33, for mention of Maimonides. For Maimonides’ remarks about Tammuz as a pro-
phet of the Sabeans, see Guide for the Perplexed, part 2, chap. 29.
45
See his essay “Quali lingue tra l’altre siano state sempre li più nobili,” in Bibliologia
1:438–42, 441.
46
Ibid., 36: “Il capitolo 22 in Essodo dove Iddio parla à Mose, volendo dare gli dieci com-
mandamenti dice: ‘Ascende ad me in montem et esto ibi daboque tibi ‫ את לחות האבן‬tabulas
lapideas etc.’ in greco τὰ πυξία τὰ λίθινα, si che si vede che in tutti i testi cioè questa voce
lapidea, come anco nel Caldeo ‫[ לוחין אבנא‬sic: ‫ ]לוחי אבנא‬luche abna.”
47
Ibid., 8: “vel sculpantur in silice? Le quali parole dalli Settante Interpreti sono scritto in
greco in questo modo: τίς γὰρ ἄν δοίη γραφῆναι τὰ ρήματά μου, τεθῆναι δὲ τὰ αυτὰ εν βιβλίῳ εἰς
τὸν αἰῶνα ἐν γραφείῳ σιδηρῷ και μολίβδω [sic: μολίβῳ] ἢ ἐν πέτραις ἐγγλυφῆναι quis enim utique
det ut scripta sint verba mea, ut posita sint autem ea in libro in seculuum in stylo ferreo et
plumbeo aut in petris isculpta est.” See Job 19:23–4.
translator, Jerome. Indeed, for Aldrovandi and Guilandinus, as well as

for scholars who desired accuracy in their reading of the Bible, Jerome’s
Vulgate translation did not suffice. It was not that Jerome was always
wrong; on the contrary, Aldrovandi occasionally praised him. In an
extended essay on papyrus, he approvingly cited Jerome’s translation
of the Hebrew term “in the reeds” (betoch hasuph) as “in papyrus.” In
that particular instance, the Greek text was less helpful: the Septuagint
had “in the swamp” (en to helei).48 But commendation of Jerome was
frequently paired with criticism of his translation of the Bible’s natural-
istic language. In an essay entitled “De volumine,” Aldrovandi remarks,
“In Exodus chapter 22 [sic: 24:7] Jerome translates volumen federis
[volume of the covenant] where the Hebrew text has the word sepher,
which means book. Almost everywhere else he translates this word as
book [liber] but here he translates it as volumen.”49 Significantly, the
portion of this phrase that mentioned “covenant” was less important to
Aldrovandi than the part that mentioned “book”; his interest lay in the
realm of physical bibliography rather than theology.
Aldrovandi’s keen interest in ancient scribal culture drew him to pas-
sages in the Bible that mentioned writing implements and the materi-
als from which they were made. Upon examining those biblical verses,
Aldrovandi recognized Jerome’s limitations as a translator and his inabil-
ity to depict the Bible’s natural world with accuracy. He reflected that
in the second chapter of Exodus Jerome translated this word suph as reed
grass, which is a place abundant in fronds. When scripture says “when she
saw a wicker basket in the papyrus,” [the Hebrew word] basuph [might
mean] reed grass by the shore of the river; some explain this word to mean
algae. We read in Jonah 2:6 “the water surrounded me to my very soul; an
48
Aldrovandi, Bibliologia, 1:2: “sarà ben da avertire che in quel loco dove S. Girolamo traduce
‘in papyrione’ che ‘l testo hebreo ha ‫ בתוך‬betoch che vuole dire in mezzo; et certamente S.
Girolamo ha detto bene dicendo ‘papyrione’ essendo che quel fiume era pieno di papyro,
come dalle parole di sopra si comprende dove la Scrittura dice: ‘et exposuit eum ‫ בסוף‬bas-
suph in carecto,’ perchè ‘suph’ apresso gli Hebrei si piglia per un luoco pieno di gronchi et
papiri et significa ancora propriamente un gronco. Gli Settanta interpreti non hanno questa
parola ‘scirpeam’ ma solamente ‘θήκην’ cio cistello, et dove S. Girolamo dice ‘papyriones’
loro hanno ‘ἐν τῶ ἕλει’ cio nella pallude.”
49
Ibid., 35: “In essodo al capito 22 S. Girolamo traduce volumen federis dove il testo Hebreo
ha parimente quella voce ‫ ספר‬sepher, che significa libro; la quale in quasi tutti gli altri luoghi
della bibia traduce libro: et nondimeno traduce qui volume” (emphasis in the original).
abyss opened to me.” [Could we translate] suph habush leroschi as “algae

came up to my head?” Because suph also means the depth of the sea and
the deep sea, Saint Jerome translated it as such: “The deep sea overcame
my head.”50
If Aldrovandi admits that Jerome was correct to translate suph in the

book of Jonah as simply “the deep sea” and not “algae,” there is a sub-
tler point here: Jerome was mistaken about the name and nature of the
Sea of Reeds. A few lines later, Aldrovandi adds, “For suph Jerome says
red.”51 Because of Jerome’s rendering in the Vulgate, centuries of readers
had understood the Sea of Reeds to be the Red Sea. By comparing differ-
ent uses of the word suph, Aldrovandi showed that while the term had
a figurative meaning in the book of Jonah, its meaning in Exodus was
unambiguous: it meant reed.
And Aldrovandi was not alone in his criticism of Jerome. Guilandinus
also maintained that the Vulgate could not supply the precision he was
looking for. In a letter to the Polish botanist Stanislao Rosario, who
was then employed in the botanical garden in Padua, Guilandinus
wrote that in Genesis 6 God commanded Noah to build an ark from
gopher wood. For Guilandinus, gopher, an ambiguous Hebrew term,
should be translated as cedar. The Vulgate, incorrectly, had it as pine.52
50
Ibid., 905: “Girolamo in Εssodo al secondo capitolo tradusse questa parola ‘suph’ pro iun-
ceto, che è un luogo ove nasce gran copia di frondi. Quando dice: ‘quae cum vidisset fiscel-
lam in papyrione’ et v. 3: ‘et possint ‫ בסוף‬basuph’ id est in iunceto ‘iuxta ripam fluminis’
alcuni expongono questa voce per alga, come si legge in Jonah 2.6: ‘circumdiderunt me
aquae usque ad animam, abyssus aperuit me ‫ סוף חבוש לראשי‬suph chabusch le roschi id
est alga alligata est capiti meo’ et perchè ‘suph’ significa ancora il profondo del mare et il
pelago, però S. Girolamo ha tradotto: ‘pelagus operuit caput meum.’”
51
Ibid., 905–6. “Questo è una sorte de gronchi che nasce nelle rive de’ fuimi et ne’ lidi del
mare, et però il mar Rosso per nascer ivi gran copia de gronchi, pappiri et simile piante è
chiamato ‘Iam suph’ che si può interpretare algosum come leggemo in Essodo 10.19: ‘infixit
eam ‫ ימה‬in mare ‫ סוף‬algoso,’ che san Gerolomo dice Rubro.”
52
Melchior Guilandinus Borussus R. Stanislao Rosario Polono S.P.D. Plinii et Dioscoridis
error demonstratus. Cedrum magnam, Laricem esse probatur. Ghopher apud Moysen
quid. Item Agaricum non nisi in Laricum truncis gigni. Inibi duo Plinii loci emaculati in
De stirpibus aliquot, epistolae V: Melchioris Guilandini (Padua: Gratiosus Perchacinus,
1558), 8r: “siquidem in libro divini Pentateuchi primo capite sexto refers Deum Optimum
Maximumque mandasse Nöae ante supremum illum cataclysmi diem, quo universum genus
humanum, atque cuncta animalia terrena delere voluit, uti arcam eximiae magnitudinis ex
lignis Gopher, hoc est cedri construeret, qua se suosque et animalia pauca ab imminenti
clade interituque erueret. Nec obstat quod in Vulgata aeditione ex lignis pineis fabrefactam
legimus.”
Though Guilandinus does not explicitly state that the Vulgate erred, the
implication is clear: the Vulgate, at least in its references to natural phe-
nomena, is an unreliable source for one who desires an accurate render-
ing of scripture. For all his learning, Jerome did not possess the expertise
of Pliny in matters of natural philosophy.
In spite of this considerable skepticism regarding the Vulgate’s accu-
racy, natural philosophers believed that knowledge of the geographic
and naturalistic details of scripture was possible. As Guilandinus assured
his readers, “I shall state [matters] in the most accurate Greek, Latin,
and Hebrew words, so that the reader might understand that nothing is
about to be pronounced rashly regarding the names that pertain to geog-
raphy in the Old Testament.”53 And for scholars such as Guilandinus and
Aldrovandi, accurately defining biblical terms was not a theological chal-
lenge. They sought to use biblical words and phrases as elements in their
natural historical arguments. When its precise meaning was accurately
understood, the Bible was a text that could furnish historical proof.
One reason the Bible was valued as a historical source was its antiquity.
In his work Papyrus, Guilandinus attempted to identify the biblical city
Tanis. His sources were the biblical books Psalms, Isaiah, and Numbers,
as well as Josephus’s Antiquities. Since Moses lived six hundred years
before Homer, Guilandinus asked rhetorically, why turn to Homer for
geographic data about biblical cities when the Bible itself provides it?54
Guilandinus informed his readers that biblical information is more reli-
able than Greek wisdom primarily because it is older. His stated source
for this notion was Josephus. The Greeks’ knowledge of antiquity is “to
be laughed at,” Guilandinus intoned, citing Josephus’s Against Apion.
53
Guilandinus, Papyrus, 78: “Adscribam ipsissima verba Graece, Latine, Hebraice, ut intelli-
gat lector, nihil temere esse pronunciandum de nominibus, quae ad geographiam in vetere
instrumento pertinent.” For an excellent discussion of early modern efforts to understand
the Bible’s geography, see Zur Shalev, “Sacred Geography, Antiquarianism and Visual
Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible,” Imago
Mundi 55:1 (October 2003): 56–80; and Sacred Worlds and Words: Geography, Religion,
and Scholarship, 1550–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
54
Guilandinus, Papyrus, 75: “Tanim autem, in qua Moyses sexcentis amplius annis Homero
antiquior praeclara illa, et stupenda miraculorum facinora edidit, etiamne Homero iunio-
rem dicemus? David Psalmo 77: coram patribus eorum fecit miracula in terra Aegypti in
campo Taneos. Esaiae 20: Stulti principes Taneos, sapientes consiliarii Pharaonis dederunt
consilium insipiens. Tanta vero est civitatis istius antiquitas, ut Moyses Numerorum 13 sep-
tem tantummodo annis recentiorem faciat Hebrone, quam Hebronem inhabitavit Abraham
patriarcha referente Iosepho libro 1 antiquitatum Iudaicarum, capite 8.”
Josephus, Guilandinus explained, taught that “historical knowledge of

ancient things is to be sought not from the Greeks but from the Egyptians
and Chaldeans.” Even though the Greeks have a reputation for their
historical prowess, they should be considered “adolescents” and not
“adults” in world history. Guilandinus accepted Josephus’s argument:
the further back one could go, and the farther east one could reach, the
more accurate the knowledge one could obtain.55 Guilandinus stated the
maxim with even greater clarity when he suggested that “he who desires
to know the truth of ancient history . . . should inquire into [the works
of] the Egyptians, Tyrians, and Chaldeans.”56
Guilandinus’s faith in the Bible’s ability to provide accurate infor-
mation concerning natural knowledge was strong. It was so strong,
in fact, that he took it upon himself to correct other biblical trans-
lations in addition to the Vulgate. In a notable display of bravado,
Guilandinus went so far as to propose a correction to the Septuagint
text. The basis for his dissatisfaction was not textual corruption or
philological proof; it was natural knowledge. In his discussion of a pas-
sage in Isaiah 18 (18:2), which mentions ships made of papyrus trans-
versing water, he notes that the Vulgate has “papyrus vessels” for these
ships. Upon examination, the Septuagint’s text was even less helpful.
Guilandinus told his readers that “for ‘papyrus vessels’ the Septuagint
has epistolas biblinas, whereas I might translate it as entolas biblinas,
that is, sent forth on paper.”57
But the most compelling reason to use the Bible as a historical docu-
ment was that it debunked Pliny’s and Varro’s theory about the history of
55
Ibid., 79: “Quam Graecorum circa cognitionem antiquitatis ridendam infantiam, copiose
prosequitur sacrificulus ille eodem in loco, et magnopere post eum elevat Iosephus in prin-
cipio statim operis, quod contra Appionem condidit. In quo docere volens non a Graecis
antiquarum rerum historiam requirendam esse, sed ab Aegyptiis, et Chaldaeis, quorum
fuit institutum, ut eorum sacerdotes, et philosophi circa scribendam historiam versarentur,
mirari sese inquit eos, qui tantum Graecis tribuunt in historia, cum ipse docere paratus sit
Graecos non modo adulto iam mundo, ut ita dicam, sed etiam propemodum senescente
natos, eorumque inventa omnia esse recentia.”
56
Ibid., 80: “proinde qui vetustae historiae veritatem nosse cupiat, hunc oportere dicit ab
Aegyptiis, Tyriis, et Chaldaeis exquirere.”
57
Ibid., 129: “Malo quoque spineo, et velis ex biblo utuntur. Proinde Esaias propheta inter-
minaturus Aegypto, exorditur caput XIIX his verbis: Vae terrae cymbalo alarum, quae est
trans flumina Aethiopiae, quae mittit in mare legatos, et in vasis papyri super aquas. Ubi
Septuaginta pro vasis papyri habent ἐπιστολὰς βιβλὶνας, quas ego interpretor ἐντολὰς βιβλὶνας,
id est mandata in chartis descripta.” See Isaiah 18:2.
papyrus cultivation in the ancient Mediterranean. For both Aldrovandi

and Guilandinus, the Bible contained numerous passages that testified
to the cultivation and use of papyrus long before Hellenistic times, the
period to which Varro, and subsequently Pliny, dated papyrus’s emer-
gence. For example, quoting both the Vulgate and the Septuagint,
Guilandinus observed that Moses was placed in the Nile protected by
a “papyrus basket.” Guilandinus observed that the Hebrew word here
is gome, which he knew meant papyrus. He supplemented his assertion
by quoting David Kimh￷i, the twelfth-century Jewish exegete and lexi-
cographer, who, Guilandinus pointed out, explained that gome was a
“very light plant, from which ships were made.”58 And Ulisse Aldrovandi
was even more explicit in connecting the Bible’s statements about papy-
rus to Pliny’s argument about its recent cultivation. “On the strength of
Varro’s statement,” Aldrovandi explained, “Pliny says that paper was
found during the victory of Alexander the Great. . . . But in truth it seems
to me that Marcus Varro greatly deceives us, since paper was used before
Alexander the Great.” In fact, Aldrovandi continued, “the use of paper
or papyrus is much older than what Varro says, for here [Isaiah 18] one
should understand papyrus vessels to mean ships or, more precisely, an
oblong galley ship.” For Aldrovandi, the Aramaic paraphrase of this por-
tion of scripture made the association between “papyrus vessels” and
ships explicit.59
As enthusiastic as Aldrovandi and Guilandinus were about biblical
sources, they were just as enthralled with other ancient Jewish writings,
58
Guilandinus, Papyrus, 129–130: “Illustravit etiam naves papyraceas Moysis ad huc infantis
in aquam abiectio, quem ἐν θὶβῃ παπύρου, id est in fiscella papyracea, vel, ut vulgata edi-
tio habet, stirpea [sic: scirpea], ad Nilum Aegypti fluvium expositum fuisse, legitur Exodi
secundo. Cumque iam celare non posset, inquit propheta, sumpsit fiscellam scirpeam, et
linivit eam bitumine, ac pice, posuitque intus infantulum, et exposuit eum in carecto ripae
fluminis. Vocabulum Hebraicum ibi est GOME, quod Rabi David Kimh￷i exponit plantam
levissimam, unde fiunt naves.” The phrase ἐν θὶβῃ παπύρου does not appear in Exodus 2. The
noun πάπυρος is not to be found here.
59
Aldrovandi, Bibliologia, 4: “vuole Plinio per sentenza di Marco Varone che la charta fosse
trovata nella vittoria di Alessandro Magno, essendosi edificata Alessandria in Egitto, et
vuole, che avanti non si usasse la charta nell’uso della quale principalmente consiste l’huma-
nità e la memoria della vita; ma mi pare in verità che Marco Varrone di gran longa s’inganna
essendo stato l’uso della charta avanti Alessandro Magno.” See also ibid., 3: “Perchè l’uso
della charta over papiro è molto più antico di quello scrive Marco Varrone. Che in questo
luoco per ‘vasi di papira’ si debba intendere gli navigii, et principalmente una nave oblonga
over galera si coglie dal testo caldeo che ha in questo luogo ‫ ובדגוגין‬ubidgugejan id est ‘in
notably Philo and Josephus. The two sixteenth-century naturalists

liberally drew on those Greek Jewish thinkers and used their writings
to debate Pliny’s merits and demerits. Even though neither Philo nor
Josephus was a contemporary witness to biblical events, and neither was
reputed to be an expert on Near Eastern flora, their exposition of the
Bible was of considerable interest to Aldrovandi and Guilandinus. In
their quest to understand the natural terminology of the Bible, and to
use that terminology to clarify other ancient texts, Philo and Josephus
were trusted authorities.
Josephus was especially popular in the sixteenth century.60 Guilandinus
turned to his Antiquities when he wanted to know more about the bas-
ket Moses’ mother used to place him in the Nile. “In book 2, chapter 5,
of the Antiquities Josephus describes the basket in which Moses was
deposited into the Nile. And he calls it plegma biblinon empheres tei
kata skeuei koitidi, that is, papyrus material similar to that which is used
to bind together birds’ nests.” Guilandinus, often prone to quibble with
translations, pointed out that Gelenius’s rendering of this passage “was
hardly competent.”61 And Aldrovandi referred to Josephus, too. On the
subject of the material on which the translators of the Septuagint wrote,
Aldrovandi noted that “we have, on the testimony of Josephus in book
12 of the Antiquities that the books of the Jews which Eleazar sent to
Ptolemy were written on vellum.”62
trieribus’ come ha la translatione della paraphrase chaldea.” A trieris is a galley ship with
three banks of oars; the Aramaic ‫( דגוגא‬pl.: ‫ )דגוגין‬simply means a small fishing vessel. See
Targum to Isaiah 18:2.
60
For an introduction to studies of Josephus in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, see Peter
Burke, “A Survey of the Popularity of Ancient Historians, 1450–1700,” History and Theory
5:2 (1966): 135–52.
61
Guilandinus, Papyrus, 130: “Iosephus libro II archeologias, capite V describens arculam,
in qua Moyses in Nilum depositus fuerat, vocat eam πλέγμα βὶβλινον ἐμφερὲς τῇ κατα σκευῇ
κοιτίδι, id est texturam papyraceam similem compagi cunae. Quem locum Gelenius, qui
libros eos in Latinum vertit haud bona fide reddidit.” See Josephus, Antiquities, 2:220.
Gelenius translated the relevant passage thusly: “lectulo e papyro contexto, quantus infantu-
lum commode capere poterat, bitumineque illito, ne aqua penetrare posset, indiderunt pue-
rum.” Flavii Iosephi Opera, in sermonem Latinum iam olim conversa (Basel: Froben, 1567),
46. On Sigismundus Gelenius (ca. 1498–1554), see Peter G. Bietenholz, ed., Contemporaries
of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, 3 vols. (London:
University of Toronto Press, 1985), 2:84–5.
62
Aldrovandi, Bibliologia, 7: “Habbiamo per testimonio de Giuseppe nel 12 lib dell’antichità
che i libri degli Hebrei mandati da Eleazaro a Tolomeo erano scritti in pelli.”
Though not as well known to sixteenth-century scholars, Philo was

an important source, too.63 Although the Biblical Antiquities had been
falsely attributed to Philo, as Guillaume Budé showed in the sixteenth
century, many scholars, Jewish and Christian alike, read that work and
considered it authentic.64 The Pseudo-Philonic Biblical Antiquities aided
Guilandinus’s investigation of gopher – a wood so mysterious that the
translators of the King James Bible could not find an English equiv-
alent. Guilandinus’s proof that gopher, the Hebrew word used in the
book of Genesis, meant cedar and not pine came from Jewish sources
rather than pagan or Christian ones. He wrote that “Philo Judaeus, a
most serious author, wrote in his book called Biblical Antiquities, that
[the ark] was ‘made from cedar.’ The most erudite of the Jews confirms
this, since all of the Talmudists and the Targum[im], Rabbi Nathan [ben
Yeh￶iel of Rome], Rabbi Yehoshua the son of Karah [sic: Korha], and
others as well, state unanimously that gopher is cedar.”65 For Melchior
Guilandinus, Talmudic rabbis provided the most important evidence
that gopher should be understood as cedar and not pine.
63
On Philo in the sixteenth century, see Joanna Weinberg, “The Quest for Historical Philo in
Sixteenth-Century Jewish Historiography,” in A. R. Rapoport-Albert and S. Zipperstein, eds.,
Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky (London: P. Halban, 1988), 163–87.
64
Ibid., 167, 181 n. 32. Azariah de’ Rossi, for example, thought the Liber Antiquitatum
Biblicarum was genuine. See ibid., 172–4.
65
Guilandinus, De stirpibus 8r: “quando Philo Iudaeus, gravissimus auctor in libello cui
titulus Biblicae antiquitates, scribit ex cedrinis compactam fuisse: quod ipsum compro-
bant Hebraeorum eruditissimi, Thargum Talmudistae omnes, R. Nathan, R. Iehosua filius
CarchaK, & ceteri, Ghoper Cedrum uno ore omnes exponentes.” For the passage in Pseudo-
Philo, see Guido Kisch, ed., Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicum (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame, 1949), 115: “et nunc facito tibi arcam de lignis cedrinis.” On
Rabbi Nathan ben Yeh￷iel of Rome, see my discussion in Chapter 3. Rabbi Yehoshua ben
Korha was a tanna who lived in the mid-second century C E . He is quoted in the Mishnah
and in Midrashic literature. See EJ 2:452–53. Guilandinus’s source for this information
was almost certainly Sante Pagnini, Thesaurus linguae sanctae. I have used the edition
published by Stephanus in Paris, 1548, s.v. ‫גופר‬, p. 181: “Est (inquit R. D. in li. ra. [Rabbi
David Kimh￷i in libro radicis]) lignum leve super faciem aquarum. Thargum ‫ קדרוס‬cedri,
hoc est cedrinus. Thalmudistae quoque Hebraeorum, quator dicunt esse cedri genera vide-
licet ‫קדרוס עץ שמן וברוש ארז‬. In Beresíth rabbáh, R. Nathán exponit lignis ‫ דקדרונא‬cedri. Idem
R. Iehosúah filius Carcháh.” Regarding the “others” Guilandinus mentions, apart from the
unnamed “Thalmudistae” in Pagnini’s entry, Guilandinus might have known that Targum
Onkelos ad loc. translates gopher as ‫קדרום‬, an alternate spelling for ‫קדרוס‬, or cedar. Bah￷ya
ibn Paqudah, in turn, cites Targum Onkelos and writes that “gopher is a wood that is called
cedrus, and it floats on water.” See his commentary to Genesis 6:14. Guilandinus may have
also been aware of Targum Onkelos by reading the Antwerp Polyglot. See Biblia Sacra
(Antwerp: Plantin, 1568–72), 8 vols., 1:18–19. See p. 18 for Targum Onkelos and p. 19 for
the “chaldaicae paraphrasis translatio,” where ‫ דאעין דקדרוס‬is rendered as “de lignis cedri.”
At times, no source – Jewish, Christian, or pagan – could satisfy

Guilandinus or Aldrovandi. In a telling letter to Andreas Patricius,
another man affiliated with Padua’s botanical garden, Guilandinus ana-
lyzed the mysterious plant kikaion mentioned in the book of Jonah.66 In
it, Guilandinus is even more vociferous about the inaccuracy of biblical
translations. This time Jewish commentators as well as Christian ones
earned his disapprobation. The very title of his letter showed his dis-
satisfaction: “[In which] it is indicated that the Septuagint translators,
Aquila, Saint Augustine, Jerome, and Rabbi Ibn Ezra were wrong. It
is proved by recent discovery that kikaion is ricinus [castor oil plant],
as opposed to the opinion of all interpreters of the sacred pages of the
Jews.”67 Guilandinus was sensible of the fact that he might be accused
of excessive boldness in reworking this passage of Jonah. Nevertheless,
he emphasized that he was “truly driven to show what the prophet of
Nineveh meant when he named the plant kikai.”68
To Guilandinus, fathers of the Western church such as Augustine
and Jerome “seemed to fight” over the proper translation of this term,
and they wrote “many letters [to one another] on this matter.”69 The
Septuagint translated kikaion as κολόκυνθα, which had been rendered
as cucurbita [gourd] in the Vetus Latina. Augustine preferred the old
Latin translation cucurbita, which Jerome used in his commentary on
Jonah.70 But in Jerome’s Vulgate he translated kikaion as hedera [ivy].71
66
Guilandinus, De stirpibus, 11r: Melchior Guilandinus Borussus R. Andreae Patricio Polono
S.P.D. Andreas Patricius Polonus (Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki, 1522–87) was a Polish huma-
nist. Patricius published a collection of Fragmenta from Cicero: Fragmentorum M. Tullii
Ciceronis Tomi IV. Cum Andr. Patricii adnotationibus (Venice: apud Iordanum Ziletum,
1561).
67
Guilandinus, De stirpibus, 11r: “Indicatur 72 interpretum, Aquilae, D. Augustini, Hieronymi,
& R. Abrahae lapsus, atque KiKaion Ricinum esse praeter omnium sacrae Hebraeorum
paginae interpretum opinionem recens invento dogmate comprobatur.”
68
Ibid., 11v: “proinde ego quoque quanquam mihi in eius rei comprehensione (absit arro-
gantia dicto) non nihil tribuo, tamen ad diffinitionem timide accedo: nec quam ipse serio
persuasus sum, tam animose polliceri audeo demonstraturum me tibi ad oculum, qualem
Propheta ille Ninivitanus KiKai nomine plantam significaverit.”
69
Ibid., 12r: “nam cum illic exemplaria hebraica habeant KiKaion, nequaquam vel Hederam,
vel Cucurbitam vertere oportebat, ut acriter inter se atque pertinaciter digladiari videantur
Augustinus et Hieronymus, multis super ea re epistolis conscriptis.”
70
See Paul Antin, ed., Saint Jérome sur Jonas (Paris: Sources Chrétiennes, 1956), 108, 113, and
115. See also PL 25:1147–50.
71
Augustine and Jerome exchanged several letters on this topic, which Jerome referred to as
the “ridicula cucurbitae quaestio.” On this exchange, see J. L. Heller, “Notes on the Meaning
of κολοκύντη,” Illinois Classical Studies 10:1 (1985): 67–116, 81–91.
According to Guilandinus, both were wrong: kikaion “ought to be

translated as neither gourd nor ivy.”72 Kikaion ought to be understood
as ricinum, or castor oil plant.
The proof for this, as Guilandinus admitted, could be found in
Jerome’s own description of the plant.73 “The kikaion,” Jerome wrote,
“is a kind of shrub, having wide leaves similar to a vine shoot. When
transplanted, it soon springs up as a sapling, without the support of
any stalk or shaft.” Jerome further observed that gourds and ivy do not
need external support, since they “support themselves with their stem.”74
Guilandinus knew that Jerome and Augustine were wrong not because
he was a better philologist but because he was a botanist. He knew what
the plants they described looked like and how they grew. His experience
in Padua’s botanical garden, coupled with his deep knowledge of Pliny,
helped him identify kikaion as ricinus, or castor-oil tree.
Guilandinus arrived at this identification by broad reading in botani-
cal literature. A plant that exhibits the characteristics of kikaion – “rising
up into a great shrub, supporting itself on its own stalks, requiring no
external support, having leaves like a grape vine or gourd, growing very
quickly to a great height, and called El Keroa in Syriac” – could be
“nothing other than the castor oil plant.”75 As sources for this infor-
mation, Guilandinus cited various authorities: Ebenbithar, Avicenna,
Serapion, Rhazes, and Isahac.76 To them he added a Jewish c ommentator,
Rabbi Samuel, whom Guilandinus read at secondhand in Sante Pagnini’s
Thesaurus linguae sanctae and who equated kikaion with the Arabic Al
Keroam.77
72
See note 69.
73
Guilandinus, De stirpibus, 13r, “quando Kikaion Ricinum esse, tum Hieronymi verba
comprobant.”
74
Ibid., 12v: “Est autem Kikaion genus virgulti lata habens folia in modum pampini, cumque
plantatum fuerit, cito consurgit in arbusculam, absque ullis calamorum et hastilium admi-
niculis, quibus et Cucurbitae et Hederae indigent, suo tronco se sustinens.” Jerome, Epistola
112. For discussion, see J. L. Heller, “Notes,” 84–7.
75
Guilandinus, De stirpibus, 13r: “Etenim arbusti magnitudine consurgere, propriis cauli-
bus inniti, nullis adminiculis aegere, folia ferre Vitis seu Cucurbitae, repente in altitudinem
excrescere, et El Keroa a Syris appellari, nulli plantae praeterquam Ricino convenit.”
76
Ibid.: “auctores habeo Ebenbithar, Avicennam, Serapionem, Rasin, Isahac, caeteros.”
77
Ibid.: “adstipulant nostrae sententiae ex Hebraeis interpretibus R. Samuel, citante Pagnino
in linguae sanctae Thesauro, Kikaion Arabice AlKeroam vocari perhibens.” I have used
the Paris, 1548, edition of Pagnini’s Thesaurus linguae sanctae, p. 1160: “‫קיק‬, unde ‫קיקיון‬,
Haederam quidam vertunt . . . Harabice vocatur ‫ אל כרוע‬inquit R. Semuel.” Rabbi Samuel
Guilandinus censured Jewish scholars as often as he praised them.

For as remiss as Augustine and Jerome were in translating kikaion, at
least they attempted to do so. The same could not be said for Abraham
Ibn Ezra, whom Guilandinus upbraided immediately after citing Rabbi
Samuel. “I do not rashly repudiate the opinion of Rabbi Abraham, who
in his commentaries dared to say that by no means may one know what
sort of plant the kikaion may be.”78 This was a generous misquotation. In
the original Hebrew, Ibn Ezra’s attitude toward the kikaion is even more
dismissive. He wrote that “the Spanish sages say that it is a gourd or a
poppy. But there is no need to know what it is.”79 For Ibn Ezra, it was not
so much that the identity of the plant cannot be known but that there is
no good reason to even try to identify it. Guilandinus was appalled.
For the German botanist there simply had to be a way to translate
kikaion. And he knew that he was bucking a trend. “With great constancy
and determination, I defend and protect [my translation], which, as you
see, is against the opinion of all interpreters.”80 Guilandinus supported
his assertion that kikaion should be understood as the castor oil plant
by relying on an authority he knew well: Pliny. In Natural History Pliny
describes a plant called cici, whose behavior is similar to that of kikaion,
whose name had an etymological resemblance to it, and which was “a
very common tree in Egypt.”81 Furthermore, Pliny indicated that “some
call it [cici] croton,” a Greek term understood as ricinum in Latin. For
that Greek term, Guilandinus relied on Pliny, too.82 Although Guilandinus
never cites Pliny, it is clear the Roman naturalist was his main source.83
is Samuel ben Hophni (d. 1013), Gaon of the rabbinical academy at Sura. On him, see EJ
17:770–1.
78
Guilandinus, De stirpibus, 13r: “proinde non temere opinionem R. Abrahae reiicio, qui in
Commentariis suis affirmare ausus est, cuiusmodi planta sit KiKaion, sciri nulla ratione
posse.”
79
Ibn Ezra to Jonah 4:6 ‫מהו‬ ‫חכמי ספרד אומרים דלעת או קרה ואין צורך לדעת‬
80
Guilandinus, De stirpibus, 13v: “Ego de Hebraeorum KiKaio contra omnium ut vides inter-
pretum sententiam magna constantia et asseveratione tueor atque defendo.”
81
Pliny, Natural History, 15:25, “Proximum fit e cici, arbore in Aegypto copiosa (alii cro-
tonem, alii sibi, alii sesamon silvestre eam appellant), ibique, non pridem et in Hispania,
repente provenit altitudine oleae, caule ferulaceo, folio vitium, semine uvarum gracilium
pallidarumque.”
82
Ibid.: “Nostri eam ricinum vocant a similitudine seminis . . . at in Aegypto, ubi abundat, sine
igni et aqua sale adspersum exprimitur, cibis foedum, lucernis exile.”
83
Guilandinus, De stirpibus, 13r: “Verum enimvero KiKaion, quam Keruam et AlKeroam
Arabes nominant, Graeci κρότωνα appelant.”
Guilandinus boasted about the support for his theory that he received
from the famous anatomist Gabriele Fallopia, the “pillar of the Paduan
Academy,” who “greatly admired my opinion about kikaion . . . and
embraced it with both of his arms.”84 An endorsement for his trans-
lation from an illustrious colleague – the “prince of physicians in his
time,” in the words of a seventeenth-century writer – was important to
Guilandinus.85 And the fact that more than one notable Italian botanist
concurred with Guilandinus’s assessment lent his argument a patina of
legitimacy.
Guilandinus’s invocation of Fallopia signals an important aspect of
his intellectual project: collaboration. More than a century ago, Charles
DeJob argued that the biggest difference between biblical studies in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance could be explained by one word: col-
laboration.86 Guilandinus discussed biblical natural history with Paduan
theologians in addition to natural philosophers. For example, Girolamo
Vielmi’s 1575 published lectures on Genesis credit Guilandinus with
helping him understand Genesis 1:11 and its mention of “seed-bearing
plants.”87 Vielmi refers to Guilandinus as “a most learned man, easily
the prince of botanical matters in our time,” and relates that they dis-
cussed the matter “in casual conversations.”88 The connection between
theologians and naturalists is even more explicit in Aldrovandi’s case.
Bibliologia, which contains many discussions of the Hebrew language
and biblical naturalia, was undertaken at the request of a friend, Camillo
Paleotti, the brother of Gabriele, Bologna’s bishop. “The first book of
84
Ibid., “Gabriele profecto ille Fallopius, Patavinae Academiae columen . . . in nullis non sen-
tentiam de KiKaio nostram obvio ore exosculatur, atque ambabas ulnis amplexeratur.”
85
Luigi Lollino, “Melchior Guillandinus stirpium medicarum in Gymnasio Patavino
Nomenclator.” For full citation, see note 8. Fallopia is described as “medicorum sui aevi
princeps.” On Fallopia, see DBI 44:479–86, where his botanical interests, in addition to his
anatomical accomplishments, are discussed.
86
Charles DeJob, De l’influence du Concile de Trente sur la littérature et les beaux-arts chez les
peuples catholiques: essai d’introduction à l’histoire littéraire du siècle de Louis XIV (Paris:
Ernest Thorin, 1884), 32.
87
On Vielmi, see Antonino Poppi, Ricerche sulla teologia e la scienza nella scuola padovana
del Cinque e Seicento (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2001), 69ff. I am grateful to Matthew
Gaetano for this reference.
88
Girolamo Vielmi, De sex diebus conditi orbis liber (Venice: Giunta, 1575), 335: “Melchior
Guilandinus vir doctissimus, et rei herbariae nostra tempestate facile princeps . . . cum
familiaribus colloquiis mecum.” I would like to thank Matthew Gaetano for bringing this
passage to my attention.
my Bibliologia,” Aldrovandi recollected in another context to his patron

Gabriele, “which deals with the antiquity of letters . . . and the use of that
very noble paper made in Egypt from papyrus, was written to the illus-
trious Signore Camillo Paleotti, your brother.”89 As was the case with
many of his other writings, Bibliologia was dedicated to Gabriele.90
Even though Aldrovandi undertook many of his most colorful explo-
rations of the Bible’s natural world at the urging of two powerful cler-
gymen in Bologna, he also indicated in side comments that a broader
and more extensive group bore responsibility for Bibliologia’s genesis.
“I am extremely busy and have no leisure time,” Aldrovandi lamented,
“distracted on the one hand by my private and public studies, and on
the other by many friends who constantly write me, and to whom I must
respond and explain my opinion about many things that they ask me,
in this Natural History.”91 Rather than being the result of a few friends’
quest to understand the place of nature in scripture, Aldrovandi’s writ-
ings on the Bible were the result of widespread interest.
One relationship that had special significance for Aldrovandi’s project
to decipher the natural language of scripture was his friendship with
Benito Arias Montano.92 Aldrovandi boasted that the Spanish polymath
had come to see him and his museum. He remembered when “Arias
Montano, that most learned theologian, extremely well versed in ten dif-
ferent languages, and most learned in every kind of science, came to see my
museum when he was in Italy.”93 Aldrovandi had many famous visitors
89
Ms. Aldrovandi 6 (3 vols.), Lettere e Discorsi, “Avvertimenti di Ulisse Aldrovandi sopra
alcuni capitoli della pittura,” 107–17r, 109r–109v: “ho trattato nel primo libro della mia
Bibliologia, scritta hora all’Illustre Signore Camillo fratello di V.S. Illustrissima, parlando
dell’antichità delle lettere, avanti che si scrivesse et ritrovasse l’uso della carta fatta dal
Papiro pianta nobilissima di Egitto.” The letter is dated 5 December 1581 (117r).
90
In his Bibliologia Aldrovandi never states this explicitly. See, however, Ms. Aldrovandi 124,
vol. 6, dedication.
91
Aldrovandi, Bibliologia, 1:1: “et anchora che io sia molto preocupato che mai non havessi
minimo otio, trattenuto parte da mei studii particolari et publici, parte da tanti amici che di
continuo mi scrivono, a quali è necessario servirli et dirgli il parer mio di molte cose che mi
chiedono in questa historia naturale.”
92
On Arias Montano, see most recently Theodor Dunkelgrün, “The Multiplicity of Scripture:
The Confluence of Textual Traditions in the Making of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible (1568–
1573)” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2012). See also Maria Portuondo, Secret Science:
Spanish Cosmography and the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
93
Aldrovandi, Bibliologia, 1:426: “Ario Montano huomo dottissimo, teologo versatissimo in
dieci lingue diverse; che in ogni sorte di scienza e dottrina il quale è sta' a visitare il mio
museo, quando è stato in Italia.”
come to his museum, but few enjoyed Arias Montano’s international

reputation. And none was as renowned for their contributions to bib-
lical studies. Comparing Arias Montano’s remarks about biblical nat-
ural history to Aldrovandi’s throws the unusual nature of Aldrovandi’s
engagement with biblical realia into sharper relief. And studying the way
Aldrovandi borrowed from the editor of the Antwerp Polyglot illustrates
how widely admired and broadly used Arias Montano’s magnum opus
was. Finally, observing how Aldrovandi moved beyond Arias Montano’s
scholarship indicates the limits of theological biblicism for natural phi-
losophers. Though Arias Montano’s Apparatus to the Antwerp Polyglot
could stimulate Aldrovandi’s thinking, it could not provide him the
answers he sought.
Occasionally Aldrovandi relied on Arias Montano for information
about biblical terms. For example, Aldrovandi’s extended discussion of
yam suph, or the Sea of Reeds, was motivated by a comment he openly
acknowledged reading in one of Arias Montano’s works:
Benedict Arias Montano, in the third volume of [his] biblical appartus

[called] Phaleg, which deals with the dimensions of the earth, says that the
Red Sea is called yam suph because of the abundance of gronchi or papyrus
and other similar plants that are used to make writing implements. Suph
means gronco, or papyrus according to some because it has a stem similar
to the gronco but a triangular [one], as we have proved elsewhere.94
But as we have already seen, Aldrovandi’s work went far beyond Arias
Montano’s; he described the gronco, or reed, at great length and speci-
fied the difference between the Hebrew term when it meant “reed” and
when scripture employed it as a metonym for sea. Aldrovandi acknowl-
edged his source so openly because both he and his readers knew that
Arias Montano did not have the final word when it came to matters
of natural philosophy. To Aldrovandi, Arias Montano’s Apparatus pro-
vided a stimulant to further investigation.
94
Ibid., 1:904: “Il Benedetto Aria Montano nel terzo tomo delli Apparati biblici Phaleg dove
trata della dimensione della terra, dice che il mare Rosso è chiamato iam suph dalla copìa di
gronchi over pappiro et simil piante che sono atte à fare istrumenti da scrivere. Perche suph
significa propriamente gronco, overa papiro secondo alcuni, perche fa un fusto simile al
gronco ma triangolare come altrove habbiamo provato.” See Benito Arias Montano, Biblia
sacra, vol. 8: PHALEG, sive de gentium sedibus primis, orbisque terrae situ, liber (Antwerp:
Plantin, 1572), 10.
The same may be said for other passages throughout Aldrovandi’s

writings. Aldrovandi knew that the Hebrew term ‫[ עט‬et] in the Bible
means an iron writing implement because it was exclusively paired with
the adjective barzel – Arias Montano pointed this out in his Apparatus.95
Similarly, Aldrovandi could write about the etymology of sepher (book)
and emphasize how it originally connoted storytelling, reporting, and
narration as opposed to any specific physical property because of a help-
ful definition of Arias Montano’s that Aldrovandi repeated almost ver-
batim, yet which he did not cite.96 Finally, Aldrovandi wrote an extended
essay on the connections between writing, engraving, and drawing – arts
that he considered to be variations of the same central practice, and
derivative of the same verbs: grapho in Greek and khakak in Hebrew.97
Once again Arias Montano was his most likely source for this idea.98
Their divergent discussions of writing in the Bible provide a final
example of how Aldrovandi borrowed from but did not duplicate
Arias Montano’s scholarship. We have already seen how extensive
Aldrovandi’s discussion of biblical writing and scribal culture is. Arias
Montano’s Biblia Regia, which Aldrovandi owned and thus very likely
read,99 was much briefer and of a different character. In his Apparatus,
95
Aldrovandi, Bibliologia, 1:8: “dove il testo latino dice ‘stylo ferro et plumbi lamina’ il greco
testo ha ‘ἐν γραφείῳ σιδηρῷ καὶ μολίβδῳ [sic: μολίβῳ]’ in Hebraico ‘‫ברצל ועפרת‬-‫[ ’בעט‬sic: -‫בעט‬
‫ ]ברזל ועפרת‬et veramente ‘berzel’ in hebreo significa proprio ferro, alla qual voce può esser
venuto il nome de ‘pranzello’ che appresso lui ha la potestà delle arme, che si fanno di ferro.”
Benito Arias Montano, Biblia sacra, vol. 7: Thesauri hebraicae linguae, olim a Sante Pagnino
Lucensi conscripti, epitome (Antwerp: Plantin, 1572): 85, defines the term “‫ ”עט‬as “Stylus
aut Calamus: Psal. 45,2 (& Iob 19,24 ubi ‫ בעט‬solum coniungitur cum ‫ ברזל‬ferrum ac si de
stylo ferreo; non vero cum plumbo quod postea sequitur).”
96
Aldrovandi, Bibliologia, 1:24: “si legge ‫ ספר‬sepher che significa ben libro ma viene dal verbo
‫ ספר‬saphar che significa raccontare narrare scrivere.” Cf. Arias Montano, Biblia sacra, vol.
7: Thesauri hebraicae linguae . . . epitome, 80: “‫ ספר‬Recensere, numerare, narrare, referre,
nunciare.”
97
See “Avvertimenti di Ulisse Aldrovandi all Illustrissimo Cardinal Paleotti sopra alcuni capi-
toli della pittura,” in Ms. Aldrovandi 97, Miscellanea de animalibus et plantis, 465r–480v,
esp. 475r–476r. Paleotti wrote a treatise on painting: Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre et
profane diviso in cinque libri (Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, 1582). On this work, see Paolo
Prodi’s introductory remarks to the modern edition in Paolo Prodi, ed., Discorso intorno
alle imagini sacre et profane (Bologna: A. Forni, 1990).
98
Arias Montano, Biblia sacra, vol. 7: Thesauri hebraicae linguae . . . epitome, 32: “‫חקק‬
Statuere, scribere, describere, pingere, depingere.”
99
Aldrovandi owned and annotated the Biblia sacra. It is mentioned in all three manuscript
catalogs of Aldrovandi’s library – see BUB Mss. Aldrovandi 27, 107, and 147. Aldrovandi
also notes that he made use of Arias Montano’s Apparatus Biblici in BUB Ms. Aldrovandi
Arias Montano defined the verb “to write” and the noun “writing” in a
single entry. That entry summarizes the Spanish polyglot’s approach to
a practice that was, after all, technological and cultural as opposed to
merely linguistic. His entry begins with the observation that “the great-
est use for writing is to communicate news of things and actions.” He
also observed that “writing is a dependable way to pass on news, both
to those who are absent and to posterity.” When Arias Montano turns
to scripture, he provides five biblical quotations, eight from the Old
Testament and one from the New Testament, that contain some form
of the word “to write” or “writing.”100 But he never uses biblical quota-
tions to contribute to a freestanding history of ancient scribal culture, as
Aldrovandi did. The distinction between the two biblical scholars is not
evidence of Arias Montano’s shortcomings compared to Aldrovandi’s
achievement; it merely underscores their different scholarly dispositions
and illustrates Aldrovandi’s propensity to treat the Bible as a text that
could enrich natural philosophy.
Aldrovandi and Other Contemporary bibliologiae
Another way to understand Aldrovandi’s tendency to integrate biblical

analysis with other sorts of investigations is to compare his Bibliologia
to other works in that genre. By discussing scribal culture, writing imple-
ments, and book history, Aldrovandi was participating in a scholarly trend
48, Methodus theatri biblici naturalis. See the list “Authores quibus utor in Theatro Biblico
naturali,” 1r–1v, 1r.
100
Benito Arias Montano, Biblia sacra, vol. 8, Liber Ioseph sive de arcano sermone (Antwerp:
Plantin, 1571), chap. 86, “de rebus humano usui inventis,” 99: “SCRIBERE, SCRIPTURA:
scribendi usus maximus est ad communicandam rerum actionumque notitiam: quando qui-
dem verba ore prolata cum praesentibus tantum communicari possunt, eaque semel emissa
non constant, atque auditorum mente saepe excidunt. Scriptura vero eadem multis con-
stansque est; et commissam sibi sententiam fideliter refert, atque ab absentes et ad posteros
quoque transmittit, s.s.e. ‘Scribe hoc ad monumentum filiis Israel’ [Exod. 17] Igitur memo-
riae conservandae significationem scripturae usus habet. ut, ‘Scribes ea super posteis,’ etc etc
[Deut. 11] ‘Ecce scriptum est coram me; non tacebo’ [Isa. 65] Testimonii quoque exhibendi
et contestandae rei causa res scribuntur, ut ‘Scribite vobis canticum istud’ [Deut. 31] et Iosue
‘scripsit super lapides’ [Josh. 8], etc etc ‘legem regni scripsit in libro’ [I Sam. 10] et ‘Scribe
visum, et explana sermonem.’ [Habac. 2] Rem praeterea maximam, et scitu dignissimam,
ac utilissimam scribendi cura alicui imposita significat. ut, ‘Audivi vocem de caelo dicentem
mihi, Scribe; Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur,’ etc. [Apocal. 14]. Scribitur aliquid in
palmis ad recordationem. ut, ‘Ecce in manibus meis scripsi te’ [Isai. 49].”
that was well established in his time. At the beginning of the seventeenth
century, Justus Lipsius published his De bibliothecis syntagma, a study of
ancient libraries.101 Closer to the completion of Aldrovandi’s Bibliologia,
two other Italians wrote works that addressed similar themes: Angelo
Rocca, the author of Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, and Mutio Pansa,
who wrote Della libraria vaticana.102 Neither dealt with the Bible as a
source for the history of books and writing, but each was interested in
papyrus, Hebrew literature, and the connections between them.
While Rocca’s work made little use of Jewish sources and took even
less interest in papyrus,103 Pansa discussed papyrus at length in his Della
libraria vaticana. Pansa’s composition began as a history of the Vatican’s
collection but grew to embrace a general history of writing. It mentions
the Bible more than Rocca’s work did but far less than Aldrovandi’s.
Rocca noted the “heroic acts of the Jews” and observed that Adam’s
nephews, sons of Seth, created two columns, one of stone and the other of
brick, on which they wrote “all arts.”104 These columns, which contained
101
See Paul Nelles, “The Renaissance Ancient Library Tradition and Christian Antiquity,” in
R. de Smet, ed., Humanists and Their Libraries (Brussels: Peeters, 2002): 159–73; Nelles,
“Juste Lipse et Alexandrie: les origines antiquaires de l’histoire des bibliothèques,” in
Christian Jacob and Marc Baratin, eds., Le pouvoir des bibliothèques. La mémoire des
livres dans la culture occidentale (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996), 224–42. Lipsius’s work was
first printed in 1602 and is available in volume 3 of his Opera Omnia, 8 vols. (Antwerp:
Moretus, 1637). Onofrio Panvinio’s De biblioteca vaticana was published by Juan Baptista
Cardona at Tarragona in 1587. See Nelles, “The Renaissance Ancient Library Tradition,”
166; the work was part of Panvinio’s De rebus antiquis, which remains unpublished. See
ibid., 165 and n. 21 for more about Panvinio.
102
Angelus Rocca, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana a Sixto V Pont. Max. in splendidiorem,
commodioremque locum translata (Rome: Typographia Apostolica Vaticana, 1591);
Mutio Pansa, Della libraria vaticana ragionamenti divisi in quattro parti (Rome: Giovanni
Martinelli, 1590). For a survey of writings on books and libraries in the early modern
period, see Alfredo Serrai, Storia della bibliografia. V. Trattatistica biblioteconomica, ed.
Margherita Palumbo (Rome: Bulzoni, 1993), 121–92; on Rocca specifically, see 146–55.
103
For example, in his opening list of “auctorum,” or authorities, he mentions “Aben Ezra,
Abraam Levita, Gedalia Iachia,” all of whom he assigned the honorific “rabini” to. His
book does contain an appendix on various uses of writing, including papyrus. Nevertheless,
his sources are all works of pagan antiquity; only Josephus, whom he mentions twice, has
any connection at all to Jewish literature (see pp. 377 and 380). Still, in neither instance did
Josephus directly contribute to Rocca’s history of papyrus.
104
Rocca, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, sig. *3v: “cose Heroiche fra gli Hebrei; tutte l’arti.”
Rocca’s source was almost certainly Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, trans. H. S. J. Thackeray
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 4.33. For more on these pillars, see
Albertus Frederik Johannes Klijn, Seth in Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Literature (Leiden:
Brill, 1977), 24 n. 82; John Douglas Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition
(Louvain: Éditions Peeters, 2001), 122.
a digest of Eastern wisdom, made their way to the West through Rome,
by the initiative of the “early emperors.” Pansa indulged in fairly stan-
dard praise for Adam, noting that “he gave a name to all things accord-
ing to their nature and their properties; no one would ever understand so
perfectly the paths of the constellations and the movements of the plan-
ets and stars or know so completely the nature of herbs, plants, animals,
and all other things in the world as well as he.”105 Such remarks pepper
Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s more popular work, too.106
Pansa’s history of papyrus, contained in his first discourse on the “Use
of Books and Invention of Letters,” presents a conventional account of
the natural history of papyrus, and, following Varro, he dates its use
to a remarkably late period, Hellenistic Egypt, after the translation of
the Septuagint. He claims that after the composition of the Septuagint
“a certain kind of paper was found that came from certain small trees
called papiri, which is a sort of reed similar to cane. It grows in the
still waters of the Nile, though Pliny says that they are also in Syria by
the Euphrates River.”107 Pansa also insisted that he himself had seen a
sample of papyrus and noted that “it was shown to me by the excellent
signor Castor Durante, my instructor of blessed memory. While he stud-
ied in the Collegio [of Rome], he obtained a sample of it from Padua by
the courtesy of Signor Cortuso, very accomplished in the profession of
[medicinal] simples.”108 Cortuso was in charge of the botanical garden at
105
Pansa, Della libraria, 2: “Adamo fù creato in somma perfettione da Dio, e di tanto sapere, e
di tanta congitione ch’egli impose il nome a tutte le cose secondo la loro proprietà, e natura,
e che niuno intendesse mai si bene i giri de cieli, i movimenti de pianeti, e delle stelle, e
cognoscesse si perfettamente la natura dell’herbe, delle piante, degli animali, e di tutte l’altre
cose del mondo qunato egli.”
106
Petri Andreae Matthioli medici Caesarei et Ferdinandi Archiducis Austriae Opera quae
extant omnia: hoc est, Commentarij in VI. libros Pedacij Dioscoridis Anazarbei de medica
materia (Frankfurt: ex officina typographica Nicolai Bassæi, 1598), sig *2r: “Quod vero
rerum omnium scientiam in Adam infuderit ab initio Deus, facile quidem coniicere quisque
potest ex Mosaicis monumentis libro primo Geneseos.”
107
Pansa, Della libraria, 6: “Fù poi trovata una certa sorte di carta che si faceva da certi piccioli
alberi chiamati Papiri, che è una sorte di giunchi simili alle canne, che nascono ne’lagumi del
Nilo, se ben Plinio dice, che ve ne sono nella Siria appresso il fiume Euphrate.”
108
Ibid., 7: “Et io affermo haver visto uno di questi Frutici in Roma, mostratomi dall’Ec-
cellente Signor Castor Durante di buona memoria mio precettore, mentre studiava in
quel Collegio, havuto da Padoa dal Signor Cortuso, intendentissimo della professione de
semplici.” Castore Durante’s (1529–90) most popular works were Herbario novo (Rome:
Bartholomeo Bonfadino, & Tito Diani, 1585) and Il tesoro della sanità (Pisaro: Bartholomeo
Cesani, 1565). See DBI 42:105–7, and also Dennis E. Rhodes, La vita e le opere di Castore
Padua, where he succeeded Guilandinus, and he had a degree in m edicine.

Durante was the author of several books of botanical history. While
Pansa captures the empirical and botanical spirit of inquiry, he does not
think to examine other texts that testify to papyrus’s ancient origins.
Surprisingly, Pansa failed to connect the fact that Durante’s sample of
papyrus came from Egypt to the obvious associations between papyrus
and Egypt in the early chapters of the book of Exodus. Aldrovandi did
integrate Exodus into his study of papyrus. The fact that he did so is tes-
tament to his consistent interest in the Bible and his vision of that text’s
central role not only as a spiritual and divine work but as one that could
help scholars write more comprehensive history.
Clearly, Guilandinus and Aldrovandi studied the Bible and did so in
unusual ways. To answer lexical questions, such as the meaning of papy-
rus in the ancient world, and evaluative ones, such as when it was first
cultivated and used by humans, Aldrovandi and Guilandinus turned to
scripture. They were not concerned with or qualified to comment on the
history of biblical texts and translations – issues that deeply engaged con-
temporary theologians and classicists. In fact, Guilandinus was sharply
ridiculed for his alleged incompetence. While he was still alive, shortly
after his Papyrus was published, the classical scholar and polymath
Joseph Scaliger wrote a blistering rejoinder to it that Anthony Grafton
has described in detail.109 According to Scaliger, Guilandinus was sim-
ply not fit to comment on philological matters, especially those perti-
nent to the Bible. For example, Guilandinus made a rash error when he
wrote about the Septuagint translators that, “inspired by the holy spirit,
they rendered the sacred volumes of the Hebrews from Chaldean into
Greek.”110 The Septuagint was translated from Hebrew, not Aramaic, to
Greek, and to Scaliger the misstatement was unconscionable. He retorted
that the Septuagint translators “who so ineptly translated the sacred
Durante e della sua famiglia (Viterbo: Agnesotti, 1968). Giacomo Antonio Cortuso (1513–
1603) was prefect of Padua’s botanical garden. He wrote L’Horto de i semplici di Padoua
(Venice: Girolamo Porro, 1591). On Cortuso, see DBI 29:809–11.
109
Grafton, “Rhetoric, Philology, and Egyptomania.”
110
Guilandinus, Papyrus, 86: “qui sancti spiritus afflatu sacra Hebraeorum volumina de
Chaldaico Graeca fecerunt.” Azariah de’ Rossi proposed that the seventy-two elders trans
lated from an Aramaic version of the Pentateuch. See Joanna Weinberg, “Azariah De’ Rossi
and Septuagint Traditions,” Italia 5:1–2 (1985): 7–35, esp. 23–5, 28–32, where she discusses
not only de’ Rossi’s theory but its reception in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
scriptures were inspired by no holy spirit. Furthermore [they translated]

from Hebrew, not Aramaic.”111 Isaac Casaubon had an even more scath-
ing remark about Guilandinus’s poor linguistic skills. In a dedicatory
letter to a collection of Scaliger’s minor works, Casaubon quipped about
Guilandinus that “in Greek he is completely dependent on his dictionary.
This he himself admits, and it is in any case obvious.”112
There is some truth to what Scaliger and Casaubon alleged:
Guilandinus did in fact make mistakes. But it is important to empha-
size that Guilandinus was not an editor of texts; he was a natural phi-
losopher. His task was not to establish accurate and readable editions
of classical works but rather, in the spirit of Leoniceno, to figure out
what Pliny meant. And that intellectual project had practical goals that
Scaliger and Casaubon were bound by neither occupation nor inclina-
tion to pursue. Those two great Calvinist scholars put the Bible at the
center of their historical and antiquarian endeavors: they were involved
in interconfessional polemic, which they prosecuted with philological
precision. Aldrovandi and Guilandinus did not study the Bible to estab-
lish accurate texts, involve themselves in religious conflict, or uphold the
truth of any particular confessional perspective. When asked by friends
and religious authorities to bring their natural philosophical expertise
to bear on the Bible, they obliged. When left to their own devices, they
ushered the Bible into an expanding classical canon and used it to sup-
plement their explorations in ancient natural philosophy.
To do so carried risks. Since Aldrovandi and Guilandinus made exten-
sive use of the Bible – and explicitly criticized the Vulgate – they took
precautions against attracting unwanted attention from the Inquisition.
Gabriele Paleotti acted as Aldrovandi’s protector.113 Either Guilandinus
or his publisher thought it prudent to voluntarily submit Papyrus to the
church authorities for prepublication censorship. Such ecclesiastical
111
“Profecto nullus afflatus divinus fuit illis, qui tam inepte sacra Biblia traduxerunt. Deinde
non ex Chaldaismo, sed ex Hebraismo.” Quoted in Grafton, “Rhetoric, Philology, and
Egyptomania,” 179.
112
Casaubon, dedicatory letter to Scaliger’s Opuscula varia (Paris: Drouard, 1610), sig e iiiir:
“quippe in Graeca lingua totum se de Lexico suo pependisse, neque ipse diffitetur, et res
clamat ipsa.” Quoted in Grafton, “Rhetoric, Philology, and Egyptomania,” 191 n. 41. Not
every evaluation of Guilandinus was so negative; Maffei and Montfaucon, for example,
were much more positive.
113
See my subsequent discussion.
prepublication censorship was stipulated by the Tridentine Index in

1564.114 As Paul Grendler has argued, from the mid-1560s onward “all
authors became careful self-censors.”115 Evidence of Guilandinus’s fidel-
ity to this policy may be found in the form of a printed note prefixed
to the 1572 edition of Papyrus, which explains Guilandinus’s actions
to readers and assures them the work they are about to read contains
nothing offensive to “good morals,” the Catholic faith, or its representa-
tives.116 Given how frequently he quoted the Bible, and how freely he
rendered biblical phrases, it is not surprising that Guilandinus or his
publisher would have taken this vigilant action.
Aldrovandi drew attention from the Inquisition, too. As a young man,
he was arrested in 1549 for suspicion of heresy and was placed under
house arrest in Rome for almost a year.117 He abjured in Bologna’s cathe-
dral in September of that year. His specific infraction was fraternization
with presumed Protestants. A deposition from 1550 against Francesco
Linguardo, a notorious bookseller in Bologna known to have Protestant
sympathies, implicates Aldrovandi as a member of his circle.118 The
naturalist’s name was cleared, but allegations against his fidelity to the
Holy See would resurface throughout his life. He was once again in
114
The Index was published that year in Venice by Aldus Manutius. See Paul Grendler, The
Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1977), 148–61.
115
Ibid., 287.
116
“Noverint omnes, Papyrum Melchioris Guilandini una cum auctariis exhibitam fuisse ante-
quam typis subiiceretur, tum haereticae pravitatis apud Venetus, et Patavinos inquisitoribus,
tum ex Senatus Veneti decreto Bernardino Feliciano, viro cum insigniter docto, tum magno-
pere humano et Octaviano Magio eidem Senatui a secretis: qui omnes perlectis singillatim
libellis omnibus, cum nihil in eis deprehendissent, quod aut fidem catholicam, aut principes
viros, aut bonos mores offenderet, atque id syngraphis suis amplissimo Venetorum decemui-
rali collegio non modo confirmassent sed etiam persuasissent, effectum fuit quod idem colle-
gium decemuirale illos ipsos libellos publicare benigne ac gratiose permiserit, atque in super
multam, & poenam ei irrogaverit, qui citra M Antonii Ulmi voluntatem eosdem impresserit,
aut alibi impressos importaverit, venales ne habuerit, intra omnes ditiones Venetiae fines.”
Guilandinus, Papyrus, unnumbered page before sig. *2r.
117
Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early
Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 162.
118
Linguardo died before 1566 and was arrested on 26 April 1548. See DBI 65:160–1. The
deposition charges that Linguardo “ha tenuta da un tempo in qua con molti che sono ne’
medesimi errori, come è stato messer Lelio Socino, messer Ulisse aldrovandi, Sebastiano
Mainetti, Don Alemano Orlandi gia frate di S. Giacomo, frate Lucio di S. francesco et altri.”
See ACDF, SO, St. st., L.6.n.,1b, fols. 57r–58v; reproduced in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic
Church and Modern Science 1:738–41, 739.
trouble with the Inquisition in the 1570s.119 This time the charges were
similar. On 14 July 1571 Antonio Balducci, the inquisitor of Bologna,
wrote to Scipione Rebiba, cardinal of Pisa, and insisted that “since 1548
Aldrovandi had [participated] in a circle where there were Lutheran
readings.”120 Five months earlier Balducci had written to Rebiba and
denounced Aldrovandi with stinging language: he called him a “most
perfidious heretic.”121
But Aldrovandi did not lack defenders. An anonymous, undated, and
unpublished testimony of Aldrovandi’s activities and his value to the
larger community of clergymen was sent to the pope. It lucidly articu-
lates Aldrovandi’s reputation for sacred studies. “In his histories,” the
authors write,
he has inserted all natural and inanimate things of which Holy Scripture
makes mention, such as gems, plants, and animals; truly this conforms to
what Saint Augustine says. . . . There can be no doubt that this incredible
effort is much desired by scholars, philosophers, physicians, and theolo-
gians. How much utility might these histories bring to the whole world;
they could strengthen the faith of many Christians, as they have for some
illustrious and most revered cardinals who have seen his Museum, such
as Paleotti, Gaetano, Sforza, Valieri, Borromeo, Ascolano, Sfondato, Sega,
and many others. Being a reasonable demand, I hope that Your Holiness
will grant him your universal blessing.122
In a similar vein, his powerful friend and patron Gabriele Paleotti wrote
to the Roman Inquisition to assure it that he had read Aldrovandi’s work
119
See Ugo Baldini, “Cardano e Aldrovandi nelle lettere del Sant’Uffizio romano all’Inquisitore
di Bologna (1571–1573),” Bruniana e Campanelliana 6 (2000): 145–63.
120
ACDF, SO, St. st., EE.1b, fol. 831r; reproduced in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and
Modern Science, 1:737. “Ulisse del 1548 in circa dove fu letta una lectione alla lutherana.”
121
Balducci to Rebiba, 10 February 1571. ACDF, SO, St. st., EE.1b, fols. 810v–811r; reprodu-
ced in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, 734–5.
122
“Aldrovandi Ulisse Memoriale agli assunti dello Studio,” Bologna, Archivio Isolani, F. 30
(30/1–2–3). “Et in queste sue istorie inserisse tutte le cose naturali, delle quali si fa mentione
nella Sacra Scrittura, o siano cose inanimate, come gioie, overo piante, o animali, dichia-
randole conforme a S. Agostino nel libro secondo della Dottrina Christiana trigesimo nono.
La qual fatica non è dubbio che è molto desiderata da tutti i studiosi, philosophi, medici
e theologi. E quanta utilità possino apportare queste istorie à tutt’il mondo, ne possono
far fede molti Signori e particolarmente alcuni Illustrissimi et Reverendissimi Cardinali,
c’hanno veduto il suo Museo, come Paleoto, Gaetano, Sforza, Valieri, Bonromeo, Ascolano,
Sfondrato, Sega et molti altri. Et per essere giusta domanda spera che V.B. per beneficio
universale gli la concederà.” Unnumbered pages addressed to Beatissimè Pater.
on biblical natural philosophy, Theatrum biblicum naturale, and that it

contained nothing offensive:
Doctor Aldrovandi, a public professor in the studium of Bologna, has pro-

duced after much time and great labor a most copious and useful natural
history which addresses, among other things, the trees, plants, birds, and
minerals that Sacred Scripture mentions in conformity with what Saint
Augustine says in book 2, chapter 39, of De doctrina cristiana.123
Paleotti went on to explain that though Aldrovandi wished to have his

work printed, and that he was urged to do so by others, he could not
accomplish this without the approval of the Holy Office. To that end
he humbly submitted that the recipients of his letter would do him the
honor of allowing Aldrovandi’s work to be printed since it would be for
the great benefit of the public.124 Paleotti’s letter, like the advance presen-
tation of Guilandinus’s work to inquisitors, was a farsighted attempt to
secure advance approval from church authorities.
In sixteenth-century Italy, laymen who wrote about the Bible, even
its natural imagery and terminology, could raise suspicions. Apart from
Aldrovandi’s brief period of house arrest in Rome as a young man –
long before he wrote about the Bible – neither he nor Guilandinus was
ever convicted of any crime against the Catholic Church or punished
for any theologically offensive utterance. But these two naturalists,
who steered clear of confessional polemics and focused on scientific
and antiquarian matters, still piqued curiosity and possessed the power
to generate controversy. They lived in a world in which one needed to
123
Bologna, Archivio Isolani, F. 30/30 (3): Agli Illustrissimi et Reverendissimi Cardinali
della Congregatione sopra l’Indice Per Il Dottore Ulisse Aldrovandi Bolognese raccoman-
dato dal Signor Cardinale Paleotti (with the annotation: “si trattò di questo memoriale
nella Sacra Congregatione dell’Indice la quale concesse la gratia dimandata Maii 1596”):
“Il dottore Ulisse Aldrovandi publico professore nello studio di Bologna, dopo haver
con gran lunghezza di tempo et con molta fatica posto insieme una historia naturale
copiosissima et utilissima, nella quale oltre l’altre cose si tratta degl’arbori, delle piante,
degli ucelli, dei minerali che fa mentione la Sacra Scrittura, con dichiararli conforme
a S. Agostino lib. 2 de doctrina christiana, c. 39 hora che ha posto mano alla stampa
essortato a ciò et aiutato anco da’ Signori principali et di giuditio, non può passar oltre,
poichè nell’Indice nuovo si ordina, che alli ministri a’ quali tocca il rivedere et sottoscri-
vere li libri che si stampano, si devano dar l’opere le quali doveranno rivedere rescritte.”
Another version of this letter was published by Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and
Modern Science, 741–3.
124
Bologna, Archivio Isolani, F. 30/30 (3).
seek ecclesiastical approval to print a book on any topic concerning

religion or morals.
Conclusion
Ulisse Aldrovandi integrated the Bible into his study of ancient booklore
much more thoroughly than his contemporaries did. His scientific train-
ing, interest in Hebrew, and diligent examination of the Bible enabled
him to put that sacred text to new and creative uses. Among them was his
tendency to use the Bible as a historical rather than a theological source.
And a roiling debate concerning Pliny’s Natural History gave him and
his colleague Melchior Guilandinus an opportunity to combine biblical
studies and natural philosophy to an unprecedented degree. Rather than
folding their scientific learning into their biblical commentaries, as many
of their contemporaries did, Aldrovandi and Guilandinus folded their
biblical learning into their scientific commentaries. The result was a new
approach to the Bible that considered scripture as more than an inerrant
source for religious doctrine: it became a mine for valuable scientific and
historical material as well.
3
“The Grandeur of the Science of God”
David de’ Pomi and the Stones of the High

Priest’s Breastplate
David de’ Pomi, a Jewish physician and lexicographer who lived in

late sixteenth-century Venice, believed in the medical efficacy of bibli-
cal stones. Placing his trust in the powers of tarshish, one of the stones
featured in the high priest’s breastplate,1 he confessed that he “had no
greater hope in times of plague” than that stone,
for I wear it fastened in a ring on my finger, and, peering down at it in sus-

picious places, it provides me such a measure of comfort that I am bewil-
dered by it. Indeed, I notice at once how, by means of perspiration, the
poisonous vapors evaporate and evacuate from my body, and I rest content
as does he who is liberated from a fierce fever. Infinite times I have acci-
dentally touched infected persons, and, knowing they were infected, have
immediately felt the infestation of that infection in me. I then look at the
diacinto, and in no time at all I have passed into a greatly improved state.
I have known the power of this stone and the truth about how it often
changes into different colors when the quality of the air shifts.2
See Exodus 28:20 and 39:13.

1
David de’ Pomi, Tsemah￵ David Dittionario novo Hebraico, molto copioso, dechiarato in tre
2
lingue (Venice: Giovanni de Gara, 1587), 86:2: “Io n’ho fatta nel tempo del contagio ogni
maggior’esperienza, perciò che portandolo ligato in un’anello nel dito, mirandolo ne’ luogi
di sospetto, mi dava conforto tale, che ne rimanevo stupefatto, anzi mi avedevo che subito
per sudore sboravano et uscivano dal mio corpo vapori velenosi, rimanendo contento a
guisa di quel che resta liberato dal’ardentissima febre, et infinite volte m’è occorso toccare
casualmente l’infettati e conoscere la loro infettione dalla gran mutatione quale in me stesso
subito sentivo, e guardato poi il Diacinto senz’intervallo di tempo in meglior stato mi tras
mutavo. Conoscesi la bontà di detta pietra e la vera dal mutar’ella spesso colore secondo
la varietà del aere.” “Diacinto” is de’ Pomi’s Italian translation for tarshish. His entry for
tarshish refers the reader to his description of the diacinto stone (see 232:2), which he
explains in full under the heading (86:2) ‫יקנטין‬, the Aramaic term for hyacinth. See ‫יקנטין‬,
109
This personal reflection comes from Tsemah￵ David (The sprout of

David), de’ Pomi’s lexicographical work published in Venice in 1587
by Zuan di Gara.3 De’ Pomi translates tarshish as diacinto. Diacinto, or
hyacinthus in Latin, was known to possess curative properties. But few
translators, lexicographers, or biblical commentators paired the scien-
tific reputation of hyacinth with the Bible’s mysterious stone tarshish.4
This chapter explores how and why de’ Pomi did this. Since the author
of Tsemah￵ David does not reveal his sources for information about
tarshish or diacinto, the pages that follow do. My intention is to delin-
eate the options de’ Pomi had, assess which he chose, and reflect on what
those choices indicate about his intellectual proclivities and the broader
project of probing the Bible’s natural world, which his work represents.5
I argue that de’ Pomi translated tarshish as diacinto in order to attach
data from Renaissance mineralogy to a biblical term that would under-
score tarshish’s medical efficacy. He did so by using empirical evidence
of diacinto’s curative powers, as well as oral and written Greek tradi-
tions. De’ Pomi’s writings on tarshish underscore the prominence of
Greek learning in Italian Jewish intellectual life of the sixteenth century,
the persistence of oral traditions in a notoriously bookish age, and the
importance of empirical evidence in biblical analysis.
Like many other sixteenth-century lexicographers, collectors, and
medical doctors in Europe, David de’ Pomi took an avid interest in the
Aramaic for hyacinth, at 86:2. The first number refers to the page, the second to the column.
David de’ Pomi himself endorses this pagination: see “avertimento,” sig. B1r.
3
On Zuan di Gara, see Abraham Habermann, Ha-madpis Zu’an di Garah u-reshimat sifre
bet defuso, 324–370 (1564–1610) (Lod: Mekhon Haberman, 1982). Di Gara published
several other dictionaries of note, including Marco Marini’s Arca Noë.
4
In one edition of David Kimh￷i’s Sefer HaShorashim, translated by Sebastian Münster as
Dictionarium Hebraicum ex rabbinorum commentariis collectum (Basel: Froben, 1535),
tarshish is equated with hyacinth. See sig. bb3–bb4: “item ‫ תרשיש‬lapis pretiosus qui in
rationali summi sacerdotis . . . quem quidam chrysolitum vocant . . . alii dicunt quod habeat
formam ‫ תכלת‬hyacinthi.” Two other mid-sixteenth-century editions of this work, however,
equate tarshish with chrysolithus. The Basel 1539 edition has “lapis pretiosus. . . . Quem qui-
dam chrysolitum vocant . . . Chaldaeus interpretatur Aphricam.” The Basel 1564 edition has
“lapis preciosus. . . . Quem quidam chrysolitum vocant.” Since we do not know which edi-
tion de’ Pomi read we cannot determine the source of his rendering of tarshish as hyacinth.
5
A great many other entries in Tsemah￵ David address the antiquarian and scientific life of
the biblical world. Of them, a fair number are lengthy: qorban (sacrificial offering, 174:3),
re’em (unicorn, 181:3), and sambation (a mythical river, 150:2), for example. Each could be
profitably explored as examples of de’ Pomi’s integration of natural philosophy with biblical
studies.
“The Grandeur of the Science of God” 111
antiquarian and medical aspects of biblical gemstones. His responsibilities

as a physician motivated him to seek out effective remedies against all
sorts of maladies. As Richard Palmer observed, Italian doctors of the
Renaissance were trained to believe that ancient cures were the best
ones.6 The recurrent plagues that afflicted northern Italy during the
course of de’ Pomi’s career created a sharp demand for new, ever more
effective prophylactics against the “bad air” of plagues.7 Furthermore,
his immersion in the cosmopolitan world of sixteenth-century Venice
afforded him numerous opportunities to see modern-day derivatives
of these stones and speak to the merchants who sold them, the sailors
who brought them back, the pharmacists who prescribed them, and the
fortunate owners who had the resources and connections to purchase
them. For example, he acquired his diacinto stone, and much informa-
tion about its provenance in the East Indies, from a man he described
as a “great Muslim merchant.”8 In other writings besides his dictionary
de’ Pomi boasted of his prowess in curing people during times of plague.
On 1 July 1589, de’ Pomi wrote to Pope Sixtus V to request permis-
sion to treat Christian patients. He informed the supreme pontiff that
“it will likewise be attested that during the plague which broke out here
I performed immense services to the state in visiting and caring for the
afflicted without any reward.”9 Testimonies to de’ Pomi’s skill came from
other pens as well. Earlier in 1589, Archbishop Matteucci, the papal
nuncio in Venice, wrote to Sixtus V noting that de’ Pomi “has the
6
Richard Palmer, “Medical Botany in Northern Italy in the Renaissance,” Journal of the
Royal Society of Medicine 78 (February 1985): 149–57.
7
Katharine Park has shown how in medieval Florence frequent contagion provoked a crisis
of confidence in traditional medicine, prompting healers to combat the plague by other
means. See her Doctors and Medicine in Early Medieval Florence (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995). De’ Pomi’s Jewish colleague Abraham Yagel emphasized that bibli-
cal incense could counter the effects of plague and urged his readers to carry around a piece
of sponge cake modeled on the oil bread mentioned in Exodus 29:23 as a prophylactic
against the plague. See his Moshia Ḥosim (Venice: Zuan di Gara, 1587), 17b–18a and 21b,
respectively. On the notion that Yagel moved beyond traditional Galenic medicine to cures
based in his own religious tradition, see David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic and Science:
The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1988): 33.
8
De’ Pomi, Tsemaḥ David, 232:3.
9
See Archivio Segreto del Vaticano, Dispacci del nunzio a Venezia all Segreteria di Stato, filza
28, f. 282, published in David Chambers and Brian Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary
History, 1450–1630 (London: Blackwell, 1992), 341.
reputation of being, although a Jew, a good man” and that he “effected

some remarkable cures at the time of the plague.”10
Late Renaissance natural philosophers wrote at length about pre-
cious stones, and David de’ Pomi was no exception. The most promi-
nent group of entries that treat mineralogical topics in Tsemah￵ David
includes those defining and describing the stones of the high priest’s
breastplate.11 Within that group, de’ Pomi’s entry on tarshish, the tenth
stone listed in Exodus 28, is the most fruitful for examination. De’ Pomi
flagged the value of this entry, in which he defined tarshish as diacinto,
on the title page of his book.12 Because it is easily the most elaborate
of the twelve entries on the breastplate’s stones, and because it departs
most radically from the lexicographical tradition de’ Pomi inherited, it
tells us much about de’ Pomi’s approach to the natural philosophy of
the ancient Jewish world. In order to ascertain why de’ Pomi departed
so radically from received lexicography, we must take a wide look at all
the sources available to him to comprehend why he chose to identify
the stones as he did and expand a single entry into an edifying personal
anecdote, a scientific treatise in miniature, and a philological discourse.
David de’ Pomi was born in 1525 at Spoleto, a city that, as he himself
put it, had been ravaged by the Italian wars.13 He received his early edu-
cation at home from his father, Rabbi Isaac, and subsequently lived in
Todi where he studied “at the feet of the chief of the physicians,” Yehiel
Alatino.14 In 1545 de’ Pomi matriculated at the University of Perugia,
10
Dated 4 February 1589. Archivio Segreto del Vaticano, Dispacci del nunzio a Venezia all
Segreteria di Stato, filza 26, f. 477, published in Chambers and Pullan, Venice, 340.
11
See Exodus 28:17ff.
12
Title page, Hebrew section: ‫ועל כח הנפלא שיש בדיאצינטו‬
13
The best source of information on de’ Pomi’s life is the Hebrew autobiography included
in Tsemah￵ David. See Tsemah￵ David, sig. 5ar–5av. EJ 16:366–7, also has a useful entry on
de’ Pomi. See also Ariel Toaff, Gli ebrei a Perugia (Perugia: Deputazione di storia patria per
l’Umbria, 1975), 146–9; Ladislao Münster, “L’Enarratio brevis de senum affectibus [bref
commentaire aux maladies des vieillards] de David de’ Pomi, le plus grand médecin israélite
au XVIe siècle,” Revue d’Histoire de la Médicine Hebraique 20 (July 1954): 7–16, 125–36;
Cecil Roth, Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1959), 223–5;
Harry Friedenwald, “Apologetic Work of Jewish Physicians,” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s.,
32 (1941–2): 228–30, 407–8.
14
On Yeh￳iel (Vitale) Alatino, who served as physician to Pope Julius III (1550–5), see Oscar
Scalvanti, “Lauree in medicina di studenti israeliti a Perugia nel secolo XVI,” Annali della
facoltà di Giurisprudenza di Perugia, 3rd ser., 8 (1910): 91–129; for briefer mentions of
Alatino, see Moses Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance, trans. Elvin L. Kose
where he followed a traditional medical curriculum. Six years later he

received his doctorate in medicine and philosophy.15 He was not the only
Jew to earn a medical degree at Perugia during this time; at least two oth-
ers did as well.16 After practicing as a physician in a variety of towns in
northern Italy, de’ Pomi spent the last twenty-four years of his life, from
1569 to 1593, as a doctor in Venice. In that city he received permission
several times to treat Christian patients.17 In addition to Tsemah￵ David,
his best-known work, de’ Pomi published a defense of Jewish physicians,
a treatise on the conditions of old age, a translation of Ecclesiastes with
an essay on suffering, and a short work on plagues.18 De’ Pomi also
wrote at least two undated and unpublished texts: a historical treatise in
(Leiden: Brill, 1973), 208, and Roth, Jews in the Renaissance, 223. See also Toaff, Gli ebrei
a Perugia, 147–8 and bibliography there.
15
For detail on the typical medical curriculum of the mid-sixteenth century, see Paul Grendler,
The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2002), 319–28, and notes there. For more on de’ Pomi’s doctorate, including the diplo-
ma’s text, see Ariel Toaff, The Jews in Umbria (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 3:1282–5 (doc.
no. 2525), 27 November 1551. De’ Pomi’s degree is also published in Scalvanti, “Lauree in
medicina,” 34–7.
16
Salomone di Benigno Turani di Orvieto took his degree in 1552. Angelo di Laudadio de
Blanis took his in 1547. For more on them, see Scalvanti, “Lauree in medicina,” 31–3 and
38–9, respectively.
17
De’ Pomi’s 1589 license to practice medicine is published in David Chambers and Brian
Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary History, 1450–1630 (London: Blackwell, 1992):
340–1.
18
De medico hebraeo enarratio apologica (Venice, 1588); Enarratio brevis de senum affec-
tibus praecavendis atque curandis (Venice, 1588); Discorso intorno a l’humana miseria e
sopr’al modo di fuggirla (Venice, 1572); and Brevi discorsi et efficacissimi ricordi per libe-
rare ogni città oppressa dal mal contagioso (Venice, 1577). De’ Pomi contributed scholia
to Dioclis epistola ad Antigonum asiae regem, pro tuenda valetudine conscripta, ac scholiis
non spernendis exposita (Venice, 1588). Julius Fürst claims that de’ Pomi published an
Index novus in singulis Hippocratis libris (Venice, n.d.) in his Bibliotheca Judaica (Leipzig:
W. Engelmann, 1849–63), 3:111–13. Another list of de’ Pomi’s publications may be found in
Münster, “L’Enarratio brevis de senum affectibus de David de’ Pomi,” 162–3 n. 3. Münster
dates the Index novus to 1591. I have never seen either the Dioclis epistola or the Index
novus, nor have I found a record, let alone description of them, in any library catalog. The
text on pages 10 to 28 of de’ Pomi’s Enarratio Brevis De Senum affectibus praecavendis
atque curandis consists of a Latin translation of a work by Diocles of Carystus (fourth
century B CE ) entitled Pro tuenda valetudine. Münster believes de’ Pomi translated this from
the original Greek into Latin, though he adduces no proof to support his assertion. A Latin
translation of Pro tuenda valetudine had been published some twelve years before by
Mizaldus. For more on Diocles of Carystus, see Philip J. van der Eijk, Diocles of Carystus: A
Collection of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary, 2 vols. (Boston: Brill, 2000).
For the Greek text of the letter itself with facing translation, see ibid., 1:310–21; for van der
Eijk’s commentary, see 2:352–60.
Italian on the fall of Cyprus in 1571 to the Turkish Sultan Selim II and a
messianic work in Hebrew on exile and redemption.19
David de’ Pomi wrote in three languages, published several books in
his lifetime, and supplied Christian as well as Jewish scholars with infor-
mation about the Hebrew language and the cultural world of the Bible
and postbiblical texts.20 More importantly, because he wrote about med-
icine, the Bible, and the natural world of scripture, de’ Pomi’s work is an
ideal resource for mapping the intersection of biblical studies and natu-
ral philosophy in late Renaissance Italy. In spite of the advantages that
attend a close study of de’ Pomi, scholarship on the Spoletan doctor has
not been extensive. While physicians and philologists have studied de’
Pomi in recent years, few historians have. Unfortunately, studies of de’
Pomi undertaken by medical doctors tend to be fairly impressionistic.21
Although modern doctors such as these bring a certain knowledge of med-
ical details to their scrutiny of de’ Pomi, their studies tend to lack aware-
ness of the social and cultural contexts that inform his work. Another
approach modern scholars of de’ Pomi have taken is p hilological.22 As
19
The historical treatise is Discorso maraviglioso sopra la guerra promossa da Selim Imperator
di Turchi. The best description of this work is in the Christie’s catalog of the A. L. Shane
Collection of Judaica and Hebraica, auctioned on 24 June 1998, p. 155. There is an extant
copy in Bologna, Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio, Ms. A 428. Guido Bartolucci notes this
manuscript in his article “Venezia nel pensiero politico ebraico rinascimentale: un testo
ritrovato di David de’ Pomis,” Rinascimento 44 (2005): 225–47, 227 n. 6. The messia-
nic work is in Budapest, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Ms. Kaufmann
556, pp. 43–97; see also Jewish National and University Library microfilm F 15191. It
is entitled ‫חבור על גלות וגאולה‬. Abraham David briefly describes this manuscript in Kirjat
Sefer 58 (Hebrew) (1983): 198. ‫ חבור על גלות וגאולה‬is also mentioned in M. Weisz, Katalog
der Hebräischen Handschriften und Bücher in der Bibliothek des Dr. David Kaufmann
(Frankfurt: Kauffmann, 1906).
20
Ulisse Aldrovandi owned and annotated Tsemah￵ David. See Biblioteca Universitaria di
Bologna, Ms. Aldrovandi 147 for a list of Aldrovandi’s books. Aldrovandi’s copy of Tsemah￵
David has the shelf mark A.VI.D.IV.2.
21
James L. Fuchs, “Jewish Medical Compendia and Jewish-Christian Relations in Early
Modern Europe,” World Congress of Jewish Studies 10, B2 (1990): 83–90; Angelo Mecchia,
“Cenni di geriatria in un’opera del medico umbro Davide de’ Pomi (1525–1600),” Pagine
di storia della medicina 10 (1996): 58–62; Ladislao Münster, “L’Enarratio brevis de senum
affectibus (‘Bref commentaire aux maladies des vieillards’) de David de’ Pomi, le grand
médicin israélite en Italie au XVIe siècle,” in Gad Freudenthal and Samuel Kottek, eds.,
Mélanges d’histoire de la médicine hébraïque; études choisies de la “Revue d’histoire de la
médicine hébraïque” (1948–1985) (Leiden: Brill, 2003): 161–81. Originally in Revue d’hi-
stoire de la médicine hébraïque 20 (1954).
22
Massimo Pazzini, “Registrazione e definitione del lemma nel dizionario di Rabbi David de
Pomis,” Liber Annuus 43 (1993): 261–76.
detailed and thorough as studies such as these may be, they tells us little
about the themes in de’ Pomi’s work or its significance to early modern
or Jewish history.
Historians have not completely neglected de’ Pomi. Cecil Roth, for
example, adopts a hagiographic tone when writing about the Spoletan
physician and insists that de’ Pomi made certain medical discoveries
well in advance of his Christian colleagues: there is an apologetic ele-
ment to Roth’s writing about de’ Pomi.23 Roth questions the scientific
“accuracy” of de’ Pomi’s discourse on the use of a ram’s horn in medi-
cal recipes.24 Remarks such as these indicate that Roth glorified Jewish
cultural achievement and minimized what he saw as its superstitious or
pseudoscientific qualities. In order to assess the scientific and cultural
contributions of de’ Pomi, we must situate his work in the context of his
time and refrain from evaluating the “accuracy” of his observations – a
modern concern that tells us more about those studying de’ Pomi than
de’ Pomi himself.
David de’ Pomi and Greek Education

Of the many tools de’ Pomi used to define and describe classical and post-
classical Hebrew words, the Greek language was one of the most impor-
tant. He knew Greek and frequently mentions Greek words and phrases
in his published works. His knowledge of Greek enabled him to seek
out alternative editions of the Bible such as the Septuagint. Greek terms
proved to be sturdy pegs upon which de’ Pomi could hang scientific and
antiquarian knowledge. In turn, that knowledge enriched the religious
tradition of which he was enamored. Interest in Greek, attentiveness to
material culture, and an emphasis on experimentation are all hallmarks of
sixteenth-century medical humanism.25 Educated during medical human-
ism’s heyday, David de’ Pomi not only absorbed its teachings but, more
importantly, applied them to his examination of the Bible.
23
See Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of
America, 1959), 223.
24
Ibid., 233.
25
Vivian Nutton, “The Rise of Medical Humanism,” in Ian Maclean, ed., Logic, Signs, and
the Order of Nature in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
A. Wear, R. K. French, and I. M. Lonie, eds., Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
The Spoletan physician learned Greek while he was a medical

student at the University of Perugia. Like all universities on the Italian
Peninsula that awarded medical degrees, Perugia placed a heavy
emphasis on lettere umane, which were taught every day, once in the
morning at hour 17 (eleven o’clock) and again in the afternoon at
hour 22 (four o’clock).26 University records from the middle of the
sixteenth century cite the importance of Greek in helping to “under-
stand the etymology of words and the structure of Latin sentences.”27
In the late 1540s, when de’ Pomi was a student, Cristoforo Sassi held
the chair of lettere umane and was a competent Hellenist. Sassi held
that position for more than forty years – evidence of his courses’ pop-
ularity with students28 – and was a pupil of the renowned classicists
Francesco Maturanzio and Riccardo Bartolini.29 In 1550, the year
before de’ Pomi took his degree, the university hired Antonio Galeota
da Urbino, a man who favored Greek letters over Latin ones in his
teaching and research.30 De’ Pomi learned Greek at a university that
valued its instruction.
De’ Pomi’s passion for Greek did not wane after he completed his
studies; his mature work, including Tsemah￵ David, amply displays his
interest in Greek history and literature. As A. C. Dionisotti pointed out,
modern scholars should be cautious about assuming a premodern writer
knew Greek just because he quoted a word or two; one could find stray
Greek words in a variety of Latin dictionaries in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance.31 But the frequency of de’ Pomi’s use of Greek obviates
this concern. In Tsemah￵ David a number of entries mention Greek. The
work’s Latin preface explains that “quite a few external terms,” meaning
26
G. Ermini, Storia della università di Perugia (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1947), 208. The
morning session focused on poetry, the evening one on rhetoric and oratory. For more on
university schedules, see Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, 147.
27
Cited in Ermini, Storia della università di Perugia, 537.
28
Paul Grendler argues in The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2002) that it was crucially important for professors to attract
students to their lectures in light of threats from Jesuit studii and private instruction.
29
Ermini, Storia della università di Perugia, 543–4.
30
Ermini notes that Galeota was “ricordato spesso con lode come poeta e grecista”
(ibid., 545).
31
A. C. Dionisotti, “Greek Grammars and Dictionaries in Carolingian Europe,” in Michael W.
Herren, ed., The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: The Study of Greek in the West in the Early
Middle Ages (London: Kings College London Medieval Studies, 1988): 1–56, 2.
those that are not Hebrew, “may be found in many commentaries.”32

The most common of these were Persian, Arabic, and Greek. But of
those three de’ Pomi lavishes the most attention on Greek. For exam-
ple, his remarks on gematria, or exegesis based on the numerical value
of Hebrew words, distinguish between the rabbinic sense of the term
and what ancient Greeks meant by it.33 Tanais, de’ Pomi explains, was
the Roman term for a place that Greeks referred to as Thanai.34 The
rabbis often used the word listeis, or “assassin,” de’ Pomi informs us,
“along with many other Greek terms.”35 Describing the matatron, or
angel that ministers to God, de’ Pomi points out that matator is Greek
for “guard.”36 According to de’ Pomi, the word siman, or sign, is “more
Greek than anything else.”37 This sampling of Greek terms in Tsemah￵
David indicates de’ Pomi’s abiding interest in the language and its
traces in rabbinic literature. Later in this chapter we will see how Greek
served him in his quest to identify and understand tarshish. But before
we are able to examine the important role Greek played in de’ Pomi’s
32
Tsemah￵ David, sig. A3v: “caeterae vero externae voces praeter Chaldaicas, quibus pro legis
interpretatione interpretes usi fuere, perpaucae existunt in commentariis vero quamplures
reperiuntur; Persianae videlicet, Arabes, Graecae (ut modo dictum est) nec non aliae.”
33
Ibid., 31:4: on the original Greek meaning de’ Pomi observes ‫לכן צריכים אנו לידע חכמת המדוד והוא‬
‫יון‬ ‫נקראת גיאומט"ריאה בלשון‬
34
Ibid., 72:4: “nome di provincia così chiamata (al mio parere) per il fiume ch’ivi corre, da
latini tanais, e da greci è detto tanai.”
35
Ibid., 110:2 In his Hebrew entry, but in neither the Latin nor the Italian that follows, de’
Pomi credits Levita as a source for this insight: ‫אמר ר' אליה בלשון יון קורין לגזלן ליסטיס וכן בדברי רז"ל‬
‫“ ליסטיס מזויין‬Questa voce ‫ ליסטיס‬listes è greca e significa assassino, e se ne sono serviti li
Rabini spesse volte, come de molte altre voci greche.” The Greek word is properly spelled
λῃστής. If de’ Pomi had encountered the word in Hebrew script he would not have known
whether the first ‫ י‬stood for ι, as he supposed, or η, which is correct. The word means “rob-
ber.” A proper transliteration would be leistes. Abraham Portaleone justified the study of
Greek on the grounds that ancient rabbis spoke it. See SG, 4r.
36
Tsemah￵ David, 116:2–3. De’ Pomi makes this observation in both his Hebrew entry (‫ובלשון‬
‫ )יון מטטור שמעתי שמורה כמו שומר‬and his Latin one: “graece, ut aiunt, ‫ מטטור‬custodem significat.”
Conspicuously, Metatron was a technical term in Kabbalah. See Daniel Abrams, “The
Boundaries of Divine Ontology: The Inclusion of Metatron in the Godhead,” Harvard
Theological Review 87:3 (1994): 291–321; Moshe Idel, “Enoch Is Metatron,” Immanuel
24–5 (1990): 220–40; Lawrence Kaplan, “Enoch and Metatron Revisited: A Critical
Analysis of Moshe Idel’s Method of Reconstruction,” Kabbalah 6 (2001): 73–119. I am
grateful to Yaacob Dweck for these references.
37
Tsemah￵ David, 152:4. Curiously, only the Hebrew and Italian portions of this entry make
this point; the Latin is silent. Hebrew: (‫ ;)והוא לשון יוני ממש קורין לאות סימן‬Italian: “Questa voce
‫ סימן‬è più tosto greca che di altra sorte de lingua e significa segno; si truova nulla dimanco
nella Sagra Scrittura che v’è composto verbo, come dir segnare.”
writings, we must explore the acknowledged traditions Tsemah￵ David

inherited and responded to: natural philosophy, Hebrew lexicography,
and Renaissance mineralogy.
Natural Philosophy in tsema Ḥ david
The stated aim of Tsemah￵ David was to clarify confusing language in

scripture. In his Latin preface to the work, de’ Pomi noted that Hebrew
terms possess various meanings and that “ambiguous words may be
regularly found among Hebrew [writers].”38 One who studies de’
Pomi’s dictionary, as a Hebrew passage on the title page advertised,
“will scarcely need any other commentary to understand and discern
the interpretation of literary matters and [their] plain sense.”39 Similarly,
the Latin section of Tsemah￵ David’s title page emphasized that diligent
readers could use the dictionary to interpret the Holy Scriptures “with
ease.”40 But de’ Pomi’s work had broader applications apart from elu-
cidating the true meaning of scripture. It also introduced readers to
postclassical Hebrew writings. And the sorts of writings de’ Pomi had
in mind were not only “declarations and discourses on the divine and
Mosaic law” but also those “about many of the liberal arts.”41 His dic-
tionary helped readers “clearly understand the force of the meaning of
every term written by diverse Hebrew authors about various fields of
learning.”42 Words like tarshish had substantial afterlives in late antique
and medieval Hebrew writings. De’ Pomi’s tendency to apply scientific
learning to the Bible and biblical learning to modern science is a partic-
ular feature of Tsemah￵ David.
As did many physicians of the late Renaissance, David de’ Pomi infused
his work with colorful digressions on a variety of natural philosophic
topics. Essays such as the one on the ram’s horn that Roth mocked were
38
Ibid., Prefatio, sig. A3v: “verborum quin etiam aequivocatio non rarò apud hebraeos
reperitur.”
39
Ibid., title page, Hebrew section:‫באופן שכל מי שיקראהו לא יצטרך כמעט לפירוש אחר להבין ולהשכיל פשר‬
‫ישר‬ ‫דבר ופשט‬
40
Ibid., Latin section: “ut quisque conceptum suum haebraice eleganter exprimere scriptura-
sque singulas sacras interpretari perfacile valeat.”
41
Ibid., Italian preface: “alli signori lettori”: “discorsi sopra la Divina e Mosaica legge, e sopra
molte delle arti liberali.”
42
Ibid., “parendo loro esser’utile a chiunque disidera brevemente intendere la forza della signi-
ficatione di ciascuna voce scritta da diversi Autori hebrei intorno a varie scienze.”
not exceptions to de’ Pomi’s scientific acumen. Though they may have
clashed with Roth’s modern sensibilities, they are nonetheless represen-
tative of de’ Pomi’s overall approach to natural philosophy. De’ Pomi’s
specific interest in natural philosophy is manifest in both the Hebrew
and Latin sections of Tsemah￵ David’s title page. The Hebrew portion
of the title page claims that the dictionary reveals “secrets and myster-
ies of nature, particularly in discussing precious stones and pearls.”43
Furthermore, the Hebrew text broadcasts that the dictionary conveys the
“true capacity and wondrous power that the diacinto possesses against
the plague as well as other matters that are hidden from the masses.”44
The Hebrew front matter not only calls attention to the conspicuous role
of natural philosophy in the work but also spotlights the efficacy of the
very stone this chapter examines.
The Latin section of the title page is even more explicit about Tsemah￵
David’s originality and its scientific bent. De’ Pomi claims that his lex-
icon is “exceedingly detailed, such as has never existed before,” and
boasts that the work deals with “pearls, unicorns, amber, hyacinth, and
other new precious stones, somewhat removed from general knowledge,
which will be deemed mysterious to most people.” Like the Hebrew
portion of the title page, the Latin section highlights the central scien-
tific preoccupation of Tsemah￵ David. It does so, however, with greater
specificity.45
De’ Pomi’s focus on stones, gems, and other marvels of biblical natu-
ral science was not unique in late sixteenth-century Italy. Other scholars,
including at least one lexicographer, took a similar interest in the scien-
tific realia of the biblical world. For example, David de’ Pomi acknowl-
edged Marco Marini in the Latin preface to Tsemah￵ David, writing that
“one can easily supplement anything lacking” in his dictionary with the
work of the “distinguished Reverend and Abbot, the most learned master
Marcus Marini, who, having no equal among Latin scholars, illuminated
43
Ibid., title Page, Hebrew section: ‫ ונגלו בו ג"כ סודות מה ורזי הטבע ובפרט בספור אבנים טובות ומרגליות‬The
title page also announces plenty of material about ‫ראם‬ ‫אמברה וקרן‬
44
Ibid.: ‫לרבים‬ ‫ ודברים אחרים נסתרים‬. . . ‫ועל בחינת האמתי ועל כח הנפלא שיש בדיאצינטו נגד השנוי‬
45
Ibid., title page, Latin section: “Lexicon novum haebraicum locupletissimum quantum nun-
quam antea . . . cum quadam Margaritarum, Unicornis, Ambrae, Hyacinti nec non caetero-
rum lapidum praeciosorum nova et minime obscura universali cognitione, quae tamquam
arcana a quam plurimis existimabitur.”
the Hebrew language.”46 Marini’s Arca Noë, completed in April 1581

but not published until 1593, advertises its concern with scientific termi-
nology in Hebrew. In his preface “to the reader who loves Hebrew” (ad
φιλεβράιον lectorem), Marini insists that the language is rich in scientific
value. He writes, “If we desire learning, we shall find no other language
richer in learning, for I marvel that, in a way, it embraces all scientific,
divine, and human learning.”47 Marini’s readers evidently agreed and
flagged Arca Noë’s scientific value. In a laudatory epistle written in
Hebrew by Israel Zifroni of Guastalla48 and included in the front mat-
ter of Marini’s dictionary, the Jewish printer and savant points out how
valuable the dictionary is, especially since it contains information about
the “shoham stones, avnei miluim” and also the “urim ve tumim,” the
prophetic stones used by the high priest to predict the future.49 Zifroni
also insists that “everything that the author truly vocalized with his hand
is correct for the discerning one and accurate for those who find under-
standing; your eyes will see and you will rejoice.”50 In directing his read-
ers to Marini’s work, de’ Pomi identified an intellectual comrade in late
46
“Qui si mancus in re aliqua extiterit, alii perfacile supplere poterunt, Reverendus praesertim
Abbas ac Doctissimus Dominus Marcus Marini, qui non parum apud latinos haebraicam
linguam illustravit.” Ibid., sig. A3v. Marco Marini played a central role in editing the Basel
Talmud of 1578–80. On his role in that project, see Joseph Prijs, Die Basler hebraïschen
Drucke 1492–1866 (Olten: Urs Graf-Verlag, 1964), 176, 179. Our best source for informa-
tion on Marini’s life is Giovanni Mingarelli’s Marci Marini Vita, included in Marci Marini
Brixiani canonici regularis congregationis Rhenanae sanctissimi salvatoris annotationes
literales in Psalmos nova versione ab ipsomet illustratos (Bologna: apud Thomam Colli ex
Typographia Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, 1748), x–xxii. Mingarelli notes that Leon Modena,
Samuel Archivolti, Israel Zifroni, and de’ Pomi himself all lauded Marini: “Hebraeorum
vero illa aetate in Italia doctissimi, Leo Mutinensis, David Pomarius, Samuel Archivoltus,
atque Israel Zifronius, cum ipsum, tum ipsius scripta laudibus maximis celebrarunt. Et
merito quidem.” Ibid., xxii.
47
Marini, Arca Noë Thesaurus linguae sanctae novus (Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1593), sig.
*3r: “Nam si doctrinam quaerimus, nullam hac lingua doctrinis copiosiorem inveniemus,
cum omnes tum divinae, tum humanae etiam scientiae doctrinas miro quodam modo com-
plectatur.” See Chapter 1 for Aldrovandi’s similar take on the scientific value of Hebrew.
48
On Zifroni, see A. M. Habermann, “The Printer Israel ha-Zifroni and His Son Elishma,
and the List of Books Which Were Printed by Them” (Hebrew), in his Studies in the
History of Hebrew Printers and Books (Jerusalem: R. Mas, 1978), 215–92; and Marvin
Heller, “Ambrosius Froben, Israel Zifroni and Hebrew Printing in Freiburg im Breisgau,”
Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 80 (2005): 137–48.
49
Marini, Arca Noë, sig. **5v.
50
Ibid., sig. **5v: ‫כל הדברים אשר נקד המחבר מידו ממש כלם נכוחים למבין וישרים למוצאי דעת ועיניכם תראינו‬
‫ושמחתם‬
sixteenth-century Italy, one whose authority other Jews such as Zifroni

would endorse several years later. De’ Pomi’s work, though unique, was
not conceived or carried out in intellectual isolation.
David de’ Pomi and Renaissance Lexicography

De’ Pomi’s fellow naturalists were not his only intellectual peers. A broader
class of learned men entreated him to polish and publish his scattered
notes. Just as Aldrovandi was impelled to investigate the Bible’s natu-
ral world by Gabriele Paleotti, de’ Pomi was persuaded to do the same
by certain Venetian nobles. In an Italian preface to his work, de’ Pomi
explains its genesis, recounting that he had “compiled in my infancy, and
in my youth a dictionary in Hebrew, Latin, and Italian for my own use.”
Some friends had seen it and urged him to publish it, since
being in my study, my composition (completed many years ago and then

laid aside) was seen by some noble and learned men. They persuaded me
in the most effective way, and even eventually implored me (since they had
the authority to order me) to see that this work be published. . . . Judging
that their demand was no less just than honest, I allowed myself to be per-
suaded to mollify them in this, their ardent desire.51
De’ Pomi tells his readers that his nameless admirers “added that my
labor was greater by a significant measure than those written by oth-
ers.”52 De’ Pomi does mention Lorenzo Massa, secretary of the Venetian
senate and, in de’ Pomi’s view, a man “not unlearned in Hebrew.”53 Not
51
Tsemah￵ David, sig. A3v: “Havendo io, nella mia fanciullezza e nella giovenil età, composto
per mio uso e dechiarato in hebreo, in latino et in volgare un Dittionario. . . . Et essendo nel
mio studiolo stata veduta questa mia compositione (fatta certo già di molti anni e posta da
banda) da alcuni Nobili e Dotti, mi hanno con ogni meglior modo persuaso, anzi con gran-
dissima instanza pregato (ancor che havessero autorità di commandarmi) a permetter’io che
tal opra vada in luce … giudicando la lor dimanda esser non meno giusta, che honesta, mi
sono lasciato persuadere a compiacergli in questo lor’ardente disio.”
52
Ibid., “soggiongendo, che la mia fatica è stata di gran lunga magiore di quella che vien da
alcuni compresa.”
53
Massa was the nephew of the well-known physician Nicolò Massa. See Richard Palmer,
“Nicolò Massa, His Family, and His Fortune,” Medical History 25 (1981): 385–410,
esp. 387 n. 14. Nicolò supported his nephew’s education at Padua; Lorenzo studied arts
there in 1552–3 and subsequently studied medicine in Northern Europe. Some letters from
Lorenzo are included in Nicolò’s Epistolarum medicinalium tomus alter (Venice: ex officina
Stellae Jordani Zilleti, 1558), which was no doubt meant to smooth Lorenzo’s entry in the
coincidentally, Massa had helped de’ Pomi publish some of his Latin
writings. Just as natural philosophy was a social enterprise strengthened
by the bonds of friendship, so was lexicography.
Dictionaries were a major preoccupation of Renaissance intellectual
life.54 By the sixteenth century, Hebrew lexicography had a storied past.
In Jewish culture, systematically defining biblical words was a project
that had begun in the Gaonic period (seventh to eleventh centuries).
Gerrit Bos has shown how Jews in medieval Western Europe translated
some of the Bible’s natural terminology into Latin and Romance ver-
naculars as well.55 And Israel Ta Shema has written about medieval lexi-
cographers, such as Nathan ben Yeh￷iel of Rome, the eleventh-century
polymath who wrote the Middle Ages’ most comprehensive Hebrew
dictionary.56 The presence of Greek words in Ben Yeh￷iel’s dictionary
Venetian civil service, since Massa dedicates it to the doge. The younger Massa’s career
took wing: in 1561 he was in Rome as secretary of the Venetian embassy, and by 1573 he
was secretary of the doge. See Palmer, “Nicolò Massa, His Family, and His Fortune,” 399.
As far as de’ Pomi’s claim about Massa’s Hebraic proficiency, Massa’s nineteenth-century
biographer Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna stated that he was “peritissimo poi nelle lettere
greche e latine non solo, ma eziandio nelle ebraiche ne conosceva gl’intimi sensi per modo
che alcuni fra’ principali giudaici dottori che chiaman rabbini, diecevano essere più nota
la lor lingua al Massa, che ad essi medesimi, e a quelli che nelle più solenni loro scuole la
insegnavano.” See Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane, 6 vols. (Venice: Giuseppe Orlandelli,
1824–53), 5:19–20.
54
John P. Considine, Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the Making of
Heritage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
55
Gerrit Bos, “The Creation and Innovation of Medieval Hebrew Medical Terminology: Shem
Tov ben Isaac, ‘Sefer ha-Shimmush,’” in Anna Akasoy and Wim Raven, eds., Islamic Thought
in the Middle Ages: Studies in Text, Transmission and Translation, in Honour of Hans
Daiber (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 195–218; Bos, “A Late Medieval Hebrew-French Glossary
of Biblical Animal Names,” Romance Philology 63 (2009): 71–94; Bos, “The Literature of
Hebrew Medical Synonyms: Romance and Latin Terms and Their Identification,” Aleph:
Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 5 (2005): 169–211; Bos, “Shem Tov ben Isaac,
Glossary of Botanical Terms, Nos. 1–18,” JQR 92:1–2 (July–October 2001): 21–40.
56
See Israel Ta-Shema, “The Italian Setting of Rabbi Nathan ben Yehiel of Rome’s ‘Arukh’”
(Hebrew), in Keneset Mehkarim, Iyyunim bisifrut harabanit biyemei habenayim, vol. 3:
Italy and Byzantium (Jerusalem: Bialik, 2004), 3–8; and the philologically detailed stu-
dies of Shifra Sznol, “Medieval and Jewish Greek Lexicography: The Arukh of Nathan ben
Jehiel,” Erytheia 30 (2009): 107–28; Luisa Ferretti Cuomo, “Dalle glosse giudeo-italiane
dell’ ‘Arukh’: accessori,” in Francesco Aspesi et al., eds., Il mio cuore è a oriente: studi di
linguistica storica, filologia e cultura ebraica dedicati a Maria Luisa Mayer Modena (Milan:
Cisalpino, 2008): 435–56; see also Raimundo Griñó, “El Meturgeman de Elías Levita y
el ‘Arukh’ de Natán ben Yehiel como fuentes de la lexicografía targúmica,” Biblica 60:1
(1979): 110–17; Shraga Abramson, “The ‘Arukh’ of Rabbi Nathan ben Yehiel of Rome”
(Hebrew), Sinai 95:1–2 (1984): 27–42.
may have made it even more appealing to de’ Pomi.57 Other philologists
such as David Kimh￷i and Abraham Ibn Ezra flourished several centuries
before de’ Pomi.58
In Latinate culture, by contrast, the sixteenth century was a transfor-
mative period. Perhaps the most important Renaissance dictionary was
Ambrogio Calepino’s appropriately named Cornucopiae, published in
1502 in Reggio. As a student of early modern dictionaries observed,
“during the whole period of the Renaissance scarcely an important dic-
tionary was published which did not reflect directly or indirectly the
influence of the Calepine.”59 This work, written in Latin, incorporated
seven languages into its entries. In the years after Calepino’s death, the
dictionary was enlarged considerably, and by 1590 four new languages
were added, including Polish and Hungarian.60 Yet Calepino’s dictionary
was more than a simple mechanism for defining words. One unique fea-
ture is its polyglot nature; another is its tendency to move beyond simple
definitions and treat the many associations of each word. In fact, DeWitt
Starnes pointed out that Calepino’s work functions as much as an ency-
clopedia as a dictionary; the same could be said for de’ Pomi’s.61 A major
source of this tendency for Calepino, and for lexicographers who followed
in his train, was Franciscus Grapaldus’s Lexicon de partibus aedium. In
that work, Grapaldus’s discussion of the term apotheca, for example,
moves from a discussion of wine shops to wine cellars to different types
of wines and ultimately to the vessels that contain them.62 Abraham
Portaleone was similarly interested in the vessels and storage facilities
that were a key part of pharmacological culture in late Renaissance
57
See the unsigned essay “Toldot rabbenu Nathan, ish romi, ba’al heArukh veQorot sifro,” in
Bikurei HaIttim (Vienna, 1829), 8–9, 28–29.
58
On these scholars and on medieval Hebrew studies more generally, see Nicholas de Lange,
ed., Hebrew Scholarship and the Medieval World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001); William Horbury, ed., Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehuda (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1999). See also Steven Harvey, ed., The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science
and Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000).
59
DeWitt T. Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries: English-Latin and Latin-English (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1954): 52.
60
I have used Andrea Calepino, Dictionarium linguarum septem (Basel: Henric-Petrina,
1575).
61
Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, 52.
62
Jonathon Green, Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made
(New York: Henry Holt, 1996): 50–1.
Mantua.63 De’ Pomi shares the same digressive and associative style that
characterizes other Renaissance dictionaries and encyclopedias, in which
their authors could display their broad learning.
John Considine has identified another cluster of sixteenth-century dic-
tionaries that explicitly served cultural historians and antiquarian schol-
ars. Three of the French Hellenist Guillaume Budé’s early works display
this approach to classical antiquity. His Annotationes (1508) on the first
twenty-four books of the Pandectae, an early text of Roman law, applied
his knowledge of everyday life in the ancient world to a study of its laws.
De asse et partibus eius libri quinque (1514) examined ancient numis-
matics and glossed many ancient texts that mentioned money. He poured
his considerable knowledge of ancient legal practices into another work,
his Commentarii linguae graecae of 1529.64 In an analogous way de’
Pomi infused his lexicographical work with his deep knowledge of nat-
ural philosophy. In the late Renaissance, dictionaries served many pur-
poses besides providing definitions of words. They frequently functioned
as outlets for authors to display their erudition.
The study of Hebrew underwent a renaissance in the sixteenth cen-
tury, just as Latin and Greek did, and engaged Jews and Christians alike.
Well-known Christian Hebraists like Sebastian Münster and Johannes
Buxtorf compiled Hebrew dictionaries. Elia Levita composed a Hebrew
dictionary in which he discussed Aramaic forms of Hebrew words.65
Sante Pagnini wrote a Hebrew dictionary as well.66 Tsemah￵ David
belongs to this renascent genre of sixteenth-century dictionaries as well
as to the established tradition of Hebrew lexicography from the Middle
Ages. Like Calepino and other Renaissance lexicographers, de’ Pomi
conceived of his work as an amplification of other texts. The Hebrew
portion of Tsemah￵ David’s title page announces that the text expatiates
upon every word in Nathan ben Yeh￷iel’s Arukh, the Meturgeman and
Tishbi of Elia Levita,67 and many “other words besides those, exceedingly
numerous.”68 Rather than expand on those works, de’ Pomi’s dictionary
63
See Chapter 5.
64
Considine, Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe, 31–3.
65
See Gérard E. Weil, Elie Lévita humaniste et massorète (1469–1549) (Leiden: Brill, 1963).
66
Sante Pagnini, Thesaurus linguae sanctae (Paris: Stephanus, 1548).
67
On these works and their place in Tsemah￵ David, see the discussion below.
68
Tsemah￵ David, title page, Hebrew section: ‫מספר‬ ‫ומלות אחרות זולתן אין‬
supersedes them. Nathan ben Yeh￷iel, David Kimh￷i, and Elia Levita rarely
expatiate upon topics in their definitions; de’ Pomi frequently does. His
entry on qorban (sacrificial offering), for example, runs to two printed
columns in Hebrew, five in Latin, and two in Italian.69 The breadth and
detail of the Latin entry for qorban reveals that de’ Pomi wished his
Christian readers to know much more about sacrificial offerings than
they could by merely reading the Bible. This antiquarian essay on animal
sacrifices condenses Mishnaic and Talmudic scholarship on this topic
and presents it, complete with the original terminology, for his readers’
instruction.
Hyacinth and tsema Ḥ david
Many entries in Tsemah￵ David are expansive and anecdotal. De’ Pomi’s
definitions of precious stones are no exception. And it is no accident that
de’ Pomi reserves the longest and most fulsome treatment of any biblical
stone for tarshish, which he equated with hyacinth. In the sixteenth cen-
tury hyacinth was commonly used as a prophylactic against the plague.
But precisely how de’ Pomi equated these two terms and the products
they represented is a more complicated matter. De’ Pomi’s Latin entry
for tarshish, like his Hebrew one, provides a skeletal outline of the issue.
Indeed, Latin and Hebrew entries are often nearly identical in Tsemah￵
David, perhaps because its author wished Jews to improve their Latin
by reading the language alongside a Hebrew translation; conversely,
Christian scholars well versed in Latin could deepen their knowledge
of Hebrew by comparing it to the Latin that followed. In contrast, the
Italian portion of de’ Pomi’s entry is where he expands on themes intro-
duced in the Hebrew and Latin, and where he presents the appropriate
medical data. Indeed, de’ Pomi almost always reserves his most extensive
remarks for the vernacular portions of his entries. By using the vernacu-
lar rather than Latin to fully develop his ideas, de’ Pomi followed in the
footsteps of several sixteenth-century writers.70
69
Ibid., 174:3–178:3.
70
Chiara Crisciani has convincingly argued that the vernacular was an increasingly serious
medium for writing in the Renaissance. See her “Histories, Stories, Exempla, and Anecdotes:
Michele Savonarola from Latin to Vernacular,” in Gianna Pomata and Nancy Siraisi, eds.,
Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
To get a sense of how de’ Pomi frames the discussion of tarshish, it is

worth quoting the Latin entry in full:
The word refers to an island of Africa, and means hyacinth, a precious

stone, which, according to the account of a certain great merchant who
traveled around India for many years, is said to be born from a [kind of]
pregnancy, and to come from a specific region of that island. When the
rains fall at a specific time (and this we may confirm as true, since when
the rains do not fall, these stones are never found), pearls spring up from
five species of mollusk, which are called ostricha in the vernacular. When
the rains fall at the proper time, the crustaceans absorb droplets, which, in
time, become pearls.71
While de’ Pomi claims that the tarshish stone comes from an eponymous
island in Africa and is a type of pearl that emerges from crustaceans only
after periods of prolonged rain, the Latin tells us nothing of the value of
the stone or of its medical properties; de’ Pomi’s Italian entry develops
these themes.
After stating that tarshish may be understood as iacinto, the Italian
word for hyacinth, de’ Pomi gives oral testimony regarding the prov-
enance of the stone. The Spoletan physician cites one of his rabbinic
colleagues and an anonymous Turkish merchant,72 who testifies to the
2005), 297–324. See also Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor
and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). On
vernacular Bible translations in Italian Jewish culture, see Giuseppe Sermoneta, Un volga-
rizzamento giudeo-italiano del Cantico dei Cantici (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1974), 21–31;
Sermoneta, “Considerazioni frammentarie sul giudeo-italiano,” Italia: Studi e ricerche sulla
cultura e sulla letteratura degli ebrei d’Italia 1 (1976): 1–29; 2 (1978): 62–106.
71
Tsemah￵ David, 232:3: “Haec vox ‫ תרשיש‬significat insulam Aphricae et hyacinthum lapidem
praetiosum, qui (ex relatu cuiusdam magni mercatoris per Indiam per multos continuos
annos vagantis) oritur ex praegnitie (ut aiunt) cuiusdam terrae illius regionis, dum in certo
tempore aquae pluviales descendunt. Et indicio est hoc veritatem possidere, quoniam, pluvia
illo in tempore non descendente, lapides illi nullo pacto inveniri [sic: inveniuntur]. Sic ortum
habere margaritas dixit in conchilium specie illa, quae ostrichae [sic: ostricha] vulgo dicitur;
aperiuntur etenim dum pluit in praefisso tempore et recipiunt guttas illius aquae, qua con-
gelata, in margaritas vertitur [sic: vertuntur].” With regard to “praegnitie,” de’ Pomi uses
an alternative spelling for “praegnatione.” I have seen few other instances of this spelling
in medieval Latin. See, for example, Pierre Berchoir (d. 1320), Dictionarii seu Repertorii
Moralis Petri Berchorii Pictaviensis ordinis divi benedicti Pars Prima (Venice: apud Haeredem
Hieronymi Scoti, 1574), 496: “certe sic, praegnities enim lactationem praecedit.”
72
It is worth noting that the Italian reads “un gran mercante turcho,” but the Hebrew is less
specific about the nationality of the man, stating only “an important Ishmaelite”: ‫ישמעלי אחד‬
‫חשוב‬
truth of what de’ Pomi conveyed in the Latin and Hebrew portions of
the entry. He recounts that
Rabbi Isaac of Avila, one of my most faithful compatriots, told me that a

great Turkish merchant, worthy of implicit trust, informed him that he had
been to the East Indies many times and had indeed spent a very long time
there. As a matter of curiosity he had sought out and investigated with
great diligence the origins of precious stones. He found places [amenable]
to the appearance [of precious stones] where the rainwater descends from
the mountains at a specific time. Since he had not come at the proper sea-
son, the jewels did not appear.73
De’ Pomi interrupts the Turkish merchant’s account to summarize the

relevance of the episode; then he proceeds to discuss the medical proper-
ties of the stone. “It is not surprising, therefore, that many of these stones
possess great virtue against the plague, especially the diacinto, which I
have experimented with in times of infestation in this great city. Because
of a heavenly influx in certain constellations, plague arises, since God
wills it to be so.”74 De’ Pomi’s entry ends by directing the reader to an
73
Tsemah￵ David, 232:3: “me disse Rabi Isaac d’Avila mio fedelissimo compadre, che un
gran mercante turcho, degno d’ogni credenza, gli disse esser diverse volte stato nelle Indie
Orientali, et ivi fermatoseci per longissimo tempo e, come curioso, haver con ogni maggior
diligenza cercata et investigata la origine delle gioie et haver’al fermo trovato nascere per
ingravidarsi alcuni di quei monti di l’acqua della pioggia venuta a certo tempo determinato,
per ciochè, non venendo in quella prefissa stagione, le gioie non nascono.” I have not been
able to identify Rabbi Isaac of Avila. A Portuguese Jew of the same name did turn up in
Amsterdam in the middle of the seventeenth century. See Yosef Kaplan, “Wayward New
Christians and Stubborn New Jews: The Shaping of a Jewish Identity,” Jewish History 8:1–2
(1994): 27–41, 31.
74
The entry on tarshish runs from 232:1 to 233:1. “Non è meraviglia donque, se molte di esse
posseggono gran virtù, particolarmente il diacinto, contra la peste come ho io isperimentato
nel tempo del contagio che venne in questa magnifica citta, perciochè nascono per influsso
celeste in alcune costellationi, secondo che piace al Signor Iddio.” On the general connec-
tion between astrology and medicine, see Nancy Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance
Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1990), 67. Also see H. Darrel Rutkin, “Astrology,” in Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston,
eds., Cambridge History of Science, vol. 3: Early Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 541–61, esp. 544–6; Lauren Kassell, “‘The Food of Angels’: Simon
Forman’s Alchemical Medicine,” in William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton, eds., Secrets
of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2001), 345–84; Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, “Between the Election and My Hopes:
Girolamo Cardano and Medical Astrology,” in ibid., 69–131. On the notion that plagues
had astrological causes, see, for example, David Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science:
University Press, 1988), 33.
excursus about hyacinth in the Aramaic section of Tsemah￵ David.75 The

lengthy Italian entry in this section simply serves to describe how pearls
emerge from crustaceans on a certain Indian island owing to the influ-
ence of seasonal rains. Before de’ Pomi could accurately expand upon
the medical properties of the tarshish stone, he first had to equate it to
hyacinth and give a full account of its origin. Having done so, the stage
was set for a medical explanation of the benefits of the hyacinth stone.
These preliminary remarks also signal the conspicuous interest in pre-
cious stones both within the Jewish community and outside of it.
De’ Pomi’s Hebrew entry states that the “true” hyacinth stone is
exceedingly rare and found only in small numbers; it is “extremely dear
to one who knows its power and ability, which is great.”76 In the Hebrew
entry, but not in the Italian or Latin, de’ Pomi dismisses quacks and
unlettered merchants. As David Gentilcore has shown, many university-
trained physicians calumniated against such medical practitioners.77 De’
Pomi cautions his readers that “the unlearned, artisans, and stone mer-
chants call the diacinto a stone of golden color, but it is not like that at
all.”78 The real color of the diacinto, de’ Pomi maintains, is red. After
remarking that the “true” stone comes only from Ethiopia and India,
de’ Pomi addresses the medical relevance of the gem. The Hebrew entry
points out that the ancient rabbis knew that the stone could help prevent
the spread of the plague; the Italian entry says nothing about rabbis, but
does remark that the “ancient and learned authors” praised its value
against the plague.79 Clearly, de’ Pomi’s praise for and belief in the med-
ical efficacy of tarshish far exceeds his faith in any of the other stones
of the breastplate. His claims about its immediate, even magical effect
against contagious disease testify to the value of the stone in his eyes.
The rest of the entry explains how to go about examining these stones
to distinguish true from false – a theme that twenty years later Abraham
75
Tsemah￵ David, 232:3: “E perche s’è ragionato della virtù del diacinto nelle dittioni ‫ יקנטין‬non
dirò altro di esso al presente.”
76
Ibid., 86:3: ‫ והוא יקר מאד למי שיודע כחו ופעולתו כי‬. . . ‫ויש לדעת שהאבן הלז האמיתי לא נמצא אלא במספר מעט‬
‫היא‬ ‫רבה‬
77
David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1998); Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006).
78
Tsemah￵ David, 86:3: ‫ועמי הארץ וגם רבים מאומני ומתגרי האבנים טובו' קוראים דיאצינטו אבן א' זהבי בצבעו‬
‫ואין ממנו בשום אופן‬
79
Ibid.
Portaleone would develop with even greater energy.80 Finally, de’ Pomi
excuses himself for the lengthy digression, stating that, “even though
with this narrative I may have departed from the order of the dictionary,
I hope that readers will not deem me worthy of censure, considering that
it was for their benefit, and not mine, that I wrote these things.”81
The first acknowledged source for David de’ Pomi’s comments on pre-
cious stones is medieval Jewish lexicography. As he himself noted on the
title page of Tsemah￵ David, the work was designed as an amplification
of three major works: the Arukh, by the eleventh-century Roman lexi-
cographer Nathan ben Yeh￷iel; and the Meturgeman and Tishbi of Elia
Levita, the fifteenth-century Jewish grammarian and lexicographer who
tutored Sebastian Münster in Hebrew.82 Given that all three of these
works are explicitly dedicated to explaining postclassical Hebrew, none
of them would have been of much help to de’ Pomi in his effort to define
the scientific language of scripture.
The one medieval Jewish lexicographer from whom de’ Pomi drew
considerably is David Kimh￷i, the late twelfth-century exegete and gram-
marian. Although de’ Pomi does not mention Kimh￷i on the title page of
his work, the front matter of Tsemah￵ David signals Kimh￷i’s importance
to de’ Pomi’s work three times. Tsemah￵ David’s Latin preface states
that the twenty-four books of the Bible contain the “pura hebraica lin-
gua.” On these rich linguistic depositories, Kimh￷i, “that illustrious man”
(insignis ille vir), based his grammar. Furthermore, Kimh￷i was the first,
according to de’ Pomi, to divide his dictionary into biblical words and
nonbiblical words: a taxonomic principle that guides Tsemah￵ David.83
In the Hebrew preface to his work, de’ Pomi mentions Kimh￷i again, sug-
gesting that Kimh￷i was de’ Pomi’s first point of reference for the mean-
ing of words after Nathan ben Yeh￷iel’s Arukh. Only after exhausting
the Arukh and Kimh￷i’s works did de’ Pomi turn to Levita’s linguistic
compositions. “I compiled this composition from all of these [sources],”
de’ Pomi writes.84
80
See Abraham Portaleone, SG, 58v–59r.
81
Tsemah￵ David, 87:2: “ancor che con questa narrativa io sia uscito da l’ordine del dittio-
nario, tuttavia spero che li signori lettori non mi faranno per questo meritevole di censura,
considerando che non per mio, ma per lor’utile ciò sia stato da me detto.”
82
See Weil, Elie Lévita.
83
Sig. A3r.
84
Sig. A5r.
Kimh￷i’s work was extremely important for de’ Pomi as he struggled

to define the precious stones of the high priest’s breastplate. Of the three
stones that de’ Pomi discourses upon most prolifically, he takes his def-
initions of two of them directly from Kimh￷i, most likely via the edi-
tion with Levita’s Latin glosses. Indeed, if we systematically compare
the identifications of the twelve stones carried out by Kimh￷i and de’
Pomi, we see that half the definitions are exactly the same.85 In short, de’
Pomi was seriously indebted to Kimh￷i and Levita for the Latinate scien-
tific vocabulary that corresponded to the precious stones. Yet de’ Pomi
found little of intrinsic interest when it came to the scientific content of
Kimh￷i’s definitions. De’ Pomi, a medical doctor, craved more substantial
material on the medical properties of the stones. Identifications, in the
form of names, may have come directly from Levita’s edition of Kimh￷i.
Descriptions, however, and medical excurses, came from other, less pre-
dictable, sources.
Examining Kimh￷i’s comments on three stones in particular underscores
de’ Pomi’s originality. For pitdah, Kimh￷i notes that it is “a stone from
among the precious stones. They say that it is green, and Rabbi Yona
writes that it is called ‫ זמרד‬in Arabic.”86 In the margin next to this gloss, we
find the words “Lapis praeciosus, smaragdus.”87 Kimh￷i’s remarks on yaha-
lom, the next stone that de’ Pomi discourses upon at length, are scarcely
more developed. Kimh￷i quotes Abraham Ibn Ezra, who maintains that a
Spanish sage noted that it is called ‫ אל מא’’ס‬in Arabic. On the chemical com-
position of the stone, Kim￵hi writes, “it breaks all stones and bores holes
through them.” In the margin next to these remarks we read “Iaspis.”88
For tarshish, Kimh￷i offers even less specificity. He writes, “a precious stone
that looks like ‫תכלת‬. We have already discussed it in the entry for ‫רשש‬.” In
85
De’ Pomi draws on Kimh￷i’s definitions of odem, pitdah, sapir, yahalom, shevo, and shoham.
86
Kimh￷i is referring to Rabbi Jonah ibn Janah, an eleventh-century Spanish grammarian.
His Kita﻾b al-Tanqı‫ﻹ‬h (Book of Minute Research) was translated by Judah ibn Tibbon as
Sefer HaDikduk. It contains a dictionary of biblical Hebrew entitled Kita﻽b al-Usu‫ﻻ‬l, which
ibn Tibbon translated as Sefer HaShorashim (Book of Roots). These works were widely
available in the Middle Ages and exerted considerable influence on many thinkers, including
David Kimh￷i. See EJ 9:680–3.
87
David Kimh￷i, Sefer HaShorashim Thesaurus linguae sanctae sive dictionarium hebreum
(Venice: Giustiniani, 1547), col. 352.
88
Ibid., col. 115.
the margin next to this entry, Kimh￷i writes “Chrysolithus.”89 Such is the
level of depth and content in Kimh￷i’s glosses.
Yet there was more to the world of medieval Hebrew writings on pre-
cious stones than just lexicographical works. Though he never acknowl-
edges them, David de’ Pomi may have drawn from a significant and
growing body of lapidaries that circulated in manuscript throughout the
later Middle Ages and early modern period. By de’ Pomi’s time there
were several Hebrew manuscripts concerning precious stones.90 Some
of these lapidaries were arranged according to the alphabetical order of
non-Hebrew mineralogical terms, others according to the names of the
twelve tribes of Israel, and still others according to the Hebrew terms
for the stones mentioned in the book of Exodus. The affinities between
some of these works and de’ Pomi’s entry on tarshish are strong. One
text extols the placement of precious stones in rings as a way of keep-
ing a curative nearby. Others identify tarshish as iacinto but say nothing
about the salubrious properties of the stone. Still others assess precious
stones besides tarshish in nearly identical ways to how de’ Pomi describes
iacinto’s medicinal value. But in the many medieval and Renaissance lap-
idaries that were distributed under various authors’ names, only a few
addressed the medicinal properties of either tarshish or iacinto in a way
that corresponds to de’ Pomi’s entry, and these were written, without
exception, by Italian or Greek physicians in the later Middle Ages and
Renaissance. Renaissance Jewish physicians in Greek-speaking areas
turned to Greek renderings of the Bible. Italian Jewish physicians did
so, too.
Rings are frequently mentioned in medieval Hebrew lapidaries, as are
observations about the efficacy of stones against the plague. A discus-
sion of the bezoar stone in a Hebrew lapidary attributed to Aristotle
and copied in 1382 in an Italian script describes the secrets of that stone
89
Kimh￷i, Sefer HaShorashim, col. 543. In the entry ‫ רשש‬there is barely any more of interest,
except that that entry indicates that ‫ תרשיש‬is a name of a place, too.
90
See the texts collected in Sefer segulot ha-avanim tovot (Jerusalem: Yerid Ha-Sefarim, 2004).
The works in this volume date from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century. In its breadth
and diversity, the collection is an excellent one with which to contextualize de’ Pomi’s lexi-
cographical work. Sadly, the book lacks a critical apparatus, introductory remarks, or justi-
fication for the inclusion or exclusion of various texts. Still, it is the best printed resource
for understanding medieval Hebrew lapidaries. I wish to thank Gad Freudenthal for making
this text known to me.
in a manner reminiscent of de’ Pomi’s discussion of iacinto.91 The text

makes two points that connect to de’ Pomi’s work: “its characteristic is
that it is effective against all plant and animal poisons, and from the bite
of rodents and their stings”;92 and it explicitly mentions that this stone
may be worn as a ring: “Whoever places a ring [made] of it on his finger
will be respected by all who look upon him.”93
An anonymous late medieval text from the end of the fourteenth
century goes so far as to identify tarshish with iacinto. Apart from
some reflections on the stone’s color and its homiletic significance for
being paired with the tribe of Asher, the most significant part of this
entry is the simple statement: “Tarshish is iacint[o].”94 This text may
have helped de’ Pomi equate tarshish and hyacinth, but it did not offer
any explanation for why the biblical stone should be understood as
iacinto.
A third text provides even more clues. In the early years of the six-
teenth century, a Cretan Jewish doctor named Moses ben Eliahu Galina,
who was also known as “the master of the secret,” wrote a work called
91
The text, entitled Secrets of Stones and Pearls, was published in a 1908 work by Moshe
Gaster entitled Secret of Secrets. The manuscript of Secrets of Stones and Pearls is in the
British Library, Ms. Oriental 2396. For a description of it, see G. Margoliouth, Catalogue of
Hebrew and Samaritan MSS in the British Museum, vol. 3 (London: British Museum, 1965),
158–60. See also Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebraeische Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters und
die Juden als Dolmetscher (Berlin: Kommissionsverlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus, 1893),
245. The text in question is in fact not an independent manuscript but rather a section of
Secrets of Stones and Pearls called (at 123r): ‫המאמר השמיני בחוכמות מיוחדות וסודות נימוסיות מהצלמים‬
‫והטוב הנפשות וסגולות האבנים היקרות והצמחים והחיונות ומלות נפלאות מסודות הרפואה ומה שדומה הארסים ואינו‬
‫ צריך לרופא ובלעדי זה ממה שיועל כמו שזכרנו‬On 134v it is called ‫שער בחכמות מיוחדות יסודות נימוסיות‬
‫ וזיכר סגולות אבני מרגליות‬See Sefer segulot ha-avanim, 76. Bezoar refers to concrements found
in different organs of mammals, birds, reptiles, sea creatures, and plants. The most prized
of these came from the gallstones of Persian goats. For more on that stone, see Deborah
Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2007), 33. See also Peter Borschbert, “The Euro-Asian Trade in Bezoar
Stones (approx. 1500 to 1700),” in Michael North, ed., Artistic and Cultural Exchanges
between Europe and Asia, 1400–1900 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), 29–43, 30.
92
Book of Secrets of Precious Stones, 76: ‫סגולתו שהוא מועיל מן הארסים כולם החיונים והצמחים ומנשיכת‬
‫[ השרצים ועקיצתם‬true pagination British Library Ms.: 135r].
93
Ibid., 76: ‫[ ומי שישים ממנו טבעת בידו יכבדו אותו כל האנשים וכל מי שיביט עליו‬true pagination British
Library Ms.: 135r].
94
Ibid., 82: “‫ ”תרשיש היא יכנ"ט‬The work is entitled These Are the Specifics of the Stones of the
Breastplate ‫ אלה הפרטים של אבני החשן‬The manuscript is from Oxford, Bodleian Ms. 647. The
name of the copyist is Shmuel, and we have no other information regarding either the
author of the work or its scribe. The work was copied in 1388, and pages 29b–30a of the
Oxford manuscript contain this text.
Divrei H￸akhamim.95 It was not published until 1730 but circulated in

manuscript form in the sixteenth century. Galina did see the publication
of another of his works during his lifetime, a treatise on chiromancy and
phrenology entitled Toldot Adam, published in Venice in 1517. Galina’s
entry on iacinto is similar to de’ Pomi’s definition in emphasizing iacin-
to’s curative properties. Galina does not identify the biblical stone tarsh-
ish with iacinto, but his treatment of iacinto strongly resembles that of
de’ Pomi. Galina defines three types of iacinto stone (as does de’ Pomi)
and observes that “the third type of this stone protects man so that he is
not struck by the arrows of lightning that descend upon him in fury from
the heavens. Additionally, he who wears it will not die from the plague
because the ring purifies the air around him. And it removes from him
the poison that is collected within it [the air].”96 Galina and de’ Pomi
shared two important things in common: they were both physicians, and
they both relied upon Greek traditions in their explication of the Bible.
The fact that Galina, a Jewish physician from a Greek-speaking milieu,
described the hyacinth stone in terms redolent of those de’ Pomi used
indicates the role that Greek learning may have played in identifying
tarshish with iacinto.97
Another even more probable source for de’ Pomi’s equation of tarsh-
ish with hyakinthos was oral tradition. It is not surprising that north-
ern Italian Jews would have absorbed Greek teachings concerning the
precious stones of the Bible. As many as fourteen thousand Greeks
lived in Italy between 1566 and 1596.98 Greek Jews were prominent in
95
See Israel Ta-Shema, “The Book ‘Ta’alumot h￷okhma’ of Rabbi Elihu Galeno” (Hebrew),
in Keneset Meh￵karim: Iyyunim bisifrut harabanit biyimei habenayim, vol. 3: Italy and
Byzantium (Jerusalem: Bialik, 2004), 331–5. See 332 n. 5, for the appellation “‫בעל הסוד‬.”
See also Gerrit Bos, “Hayyim Vital’s Kabbalah Ma’asit we-Alkhimiyah (Practical Kabbalah
and Alchemy), a Seventeenth-Century ‘Book of Secrets,’” Journal of Jewish Thought and
Philosophy 4 (1994): 55–112; 61 n. 66.
96
Book of Secrets of Precious Stones, 131: ‫האבן הזאת מהמין השלישי תשמור האדם שלא יכו בו חצי הברקים‬
‫ וגם לא ימות במגפה מי שנושאו עליו מפני שמזכך האויר שהוא סביבותיו ומסיר ממנו הארס‬.‫שירדו בזעף מן השמים‬
‫בו‬ ‫הגנוז‬
97
David Jacoby has described the affinities between Greek and Hebrew learning among
Jewish physicians in late medieval Crete in his “Jewish Physicians and Surgeons in Crete
under Venetian Control” (Hebrew), in Reuven Bonfil, Menahem Ben-Sasson, and Joseph
Hacker, eds., Tarbut ve-hevrah be-toldot Yisrael bi-yeme-ha-benayim (Jerusalem: Zalman
Shazar, 1989): 431–44; see esp. 436–7.
98
In general, see Giorgio Fedalto, Ricerche storiche sulla posizione giuridica ed ecclesiastica
dei Greci a Venezia nei secoli XV e XVI (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1967). For this statistic, see
Venice and throughout the Veneto.99 Significantly, many Italian doctors

served as Venetian envoys and resident physicians in places with Greek-
speaking Jewish communities, such as Constantinople and Crete.100 And
unattributed Greek etymologies in Tsemah￵ David suggest that de’ Pomi
may have heard oral communications from Greek speakers regarding
the role of Greek in Hebrew literature. At the beginning of the twentieth
century, the romance philologist David Blondheim showed how persis-
tent oral traditions of the names of biblical stones were in the Jewish
communities of medieval Europe; those oral transmissions gave rise to
disparate renderings of these terms.101 Long ago Joseph Perles proved
that vernacular translations of the names of the stones were regularly
taught to Jews in school.102 Blondheim published manuscript fragments
in Romance languages, written in Hebrew characters, that gave vernac-
ular equivalents for the stones’ names. Many of those translations show
the influence of Greek. Indeed, a late fourteenth-century Greek transla-
tion of the Bible known as the Graecus Venetus, undertaken by a Jew
who converted to Christianity, equates tarshish with hyakinthos.103
Closer to de’ Pomi’s own time, his colleague and coreligionist Abraham
Portaleone not only gave his own rendition of the twelve stones in Italian
but supplied that of his teacher, Moses Provenzali. Provenzali never
published his translation, and Portaleone remarks that he “received
Heleni Porfyriou, “La diaspora greca in italia dopo la caduta di Constantinopoli: Ancona,
Napoli, Livorno e Genova,” in Maria Francesca Tiepolo and Eurigio Tonetti, eds., I greci a
Venezia (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti, 2002), 151–84.
99
See Benjamin Arbel, “Jews in International Trade: The Emergence of the Levantines and
Ponentines,” in R. C. Davis and B. Ravid, eds., The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 73–96.
100
Jacoby, “Jewish Physicians and Surgeons in Crete under Venetian Control.” See also Zvi
Ankori, Encounter in History: Jews and Christian Greeks in Their Relation through the
Ages (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Center for the History and Culture of the Jewry of Salonica and
Greece, 1984), esp. 157–98 on Greek as a shared language between Jews and Christians in
the former Byzantine Empire.
101
David Blondheim, Les parlers judéo-romans et la Vetus Latina: étude sur les rapports entre
les traductions bibliques en langue romane des juifs au moyen âge et les anciennes versions
(Paris: É. Champion, 1925), 73 n. 1. See also Joseph Perles, Beiträge zur Geschichte der
hebräischen und aramäischen Studien (Munich: Theodor Ackermann, 1884), 123.
102
Perles, Beiträge, 124. See also M. Güdemann, Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der
Cultur der Juden in Italien während des Mittelalters, 2 vols. (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1884),
2:206.
103
See Oscar Gebhardt, ed., Graecus Venetus. Pentateuch Proverbiorum Ruth Cantici
Ecclesiastae Threnorum Danielis versio graeca (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1875), Exodus
28:10.
the solution to the identity of the precious stones from the academy
of the great, exalted master, the awe-inspiring man of God, our honor-
able teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Moses Provenzali of blessed memory.”104
While Portaleone ultimately did not agree with Provenzali, Provenzali’s
tradition regarding tarshish was to equate it with iacinto. David de’
Pomi did not study with Provenzali, nor did he have the chance to read
Portaleone’s encyclopedia; it was not published until several years after
his death. But Provenzali’s translation, identical to de’ Pomi’s, demon-
strates Italian Jews’ tendency to use Hellenic traditions to elucidate the
Bible’s natural science.105
As significant as the Hebrew lapidaries and oral traditions were, the
most important sources for scientific information on the precious stones
for a sixteenth-century Italian physician like de’ Pomi did not come
from Jewish texts written in Hebrew but from Christian ones written
in Latin. While Hebrew lapidaries and oral teachings may have helped
him translate tarshish as hyacinth, they could not provide much infor-
mation about the properties of that stone. By the High Middle Ages,
Western European scholars could draw from a rich well of materials on
the supposedly natural properties of precious stones.106 One of the most
prolific writers on this topic was Albertus Magnus (d. 1280). Renaissance
figures, including de’ Pomi, quote his work, and still more allude to or
borrow from his writings.107
Albertus Magnus’s De mineralibus was an important though unac-
knowledged source for de’ Pomi. Indeed, de’ Pomi’s use of the Tarshish
stone closely follows Albertus Magnus’s own description of the physi-
cal uses particular to hyacinth. Describing hyacinthus, Albertus Magnus
104
SG, 45r: ‫ומבית מדרשו של הגאון המופלא איש האלהים נורא כמהר"ר משה פרוונצאלי ז"ל קבלתי פתרון‬
‫טובות‬ ‫האבנים‬
105
On a related point, see Joanna Weinberg’s argument about Mantuan Jews’ interest in the
Letter of Aristeas in her “Azariah de’ Rossi and Septuagint Traditions,” Italia 5 (1985):
7–35, esp. 9–17.
106
Moritz Steinschneider, “Lapidarien, ein kulturgeschichtliches Versuch,” in George Alexander
Kohut, ed., Semitic Studies in Memory of Rev. Dr. Alexander Kohut (Berlin: S. Calvary,
1897), 42–72.
107
See, for example, Nancy Siraisi’s comments about Albertus Magnus’s books in Antonio
Benivieni’s library in her The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance
Medicine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 154. There were a number of edi-
tions of De mineralibus that would have been available to de’ Pomi by the middle of the
sixteenth century.
writes that, “physically, its use is that when suspended from the neck or
worn on the finger it keeps a traveler safe and makes him welcome to
those who entertain him. It also protects him in regions infected with
the plague.”108 As we have seen, de’ Pomi champions an identical use for
this stone, in terms of both the manner in which it ought to be worn and
the tutelary uses to which it may be put. Even though de’ Pomi does not
mention Albertus Magnus as a direct source for this practice, the close
resemblance between the two texts is striking and provides evidence
that de’ Pomi was reading, or at the very least knew about, Albertus
Magnus’s work.
Another unacknowledged medieval source de’ Pomi drew from is
Serapion, a Christian physician.109 David de’ Pomi’s contemporary and
colleague Abraham Portaleone refers to Serapion’s work numerous
times, and though de’ Pomi does not, we may assume he knew about
Serapion, given how fundamental his works were to sixteenth-century
medical culture. De’ Pomi learned much about hyacinth from Serapion’s
work: the color and appearance of the best sort of tarshish gem, and
several of its salutary properties. In particular, Serapion maintains that
there are three kinds of hyacinth stone but that “the red variety is better
than the others. When a fire is lit near it, it glows increasingly red.”110
Beyond this simple description of its physical appearance, de’ Pomi also
may have taken some medical details from Serapion. The medieval Arab
physician asserted that “the power of Hyacinth is such that whoever car-
ried it with himself, as either a little figurine or some other type thereof,
and enters into a place or a province in which many people have fallen,
or into a plague-stricken region, no harm will befall him and he will
remain safe from danger; no lightning will ever strike him. This property
108
De mineralibus, book 2: De lapidibus pretiosis, tractatus 2: De lapidibus nominatis et
eorum virtutibus, cap. 8: De incipientibus ab I litera, p. 232: “in ligaturis autem physicis
est usus eius, quod collo suspensus vel digito gestatus, tutum reddit peregrinum et gratum
hospitibus, et est contra pestiferas regiones.” Quoted in Girolamo Cardano, De Subtilitate,
ed. Elio Nenci (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2004), 598 n. 19.
109
He was known as Johannes Serapion or Serapion the Younger in the Christian West, to
distinguish him from his ninth-century predecessor who wrote in Syriac. On Serapion, see
George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vols. in 5 (Baltimore: William &
Wilkins, 1927–48), II, i: 229.
110
Quoted in Cardano, De Subtilitate, 598, n. 18: “et rubeus est melior aliis, quia quando
incenditur ignis super eum, rubescit multum.”
of hyacinth is well known and much praised among men.”111 De’ Pomi
seems to have taken as much from Serapion as from Albertus Magnus,
and each scholar provided valuable information on the medical value of
the hyacinth stone.
The most likely way de’ Pomi learned about these medieval figures
was by reading Renaissance medical writers. Perhaps the first text David
de’ Pomi would have turned to for information about the medical prop-
erties of stones was Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres. In fact, this book
was one of the most popular medical works of the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries.112 Virtually any university-educated physician
would have been familiar with its contents. At various points in his work,
Ficino discusses the magical and medical properties of precious stones,
explaining that these properties are inherently magical and quasi divine:
“Since properties of this kind and their effects could not come into being
by elemental power, it follows that they proceed from the life and spirit
of the cosmos, particularly through those very rays of the stars; and that
therefore through them the spirit is affected as much and as soon as pos-
sible and exposed very much to celestial influences.”113 Ficino believed
that the cosmos was animate and that divinely infused spiritus from
the heavens affected things on earth. To Ficino, precious stones were
repositories for spiritus – an idea that would have been appealing to de’
Pomi. Moving on to discuss some particular stones, Ficino observes that
“it is for just this reason that emerald, jacinth, sapphire, topaz, ruby,
unicorn’s horn, but especially the stone which the Arabs call bezoar, are
endowed with occult properties of the Graces.”114 Because of their divine
nature, supernatural origin, and medical efficacy, many of these objects,
or their Hebrew equivalents, receive lengthy and detailed entries in de’
Pomi’s dictionary. In yet another parallel to de’ Pomi’s prophylactic use
111
Ibid.: “est autem virtus hyacinthi, quod qui portaverit eum secum, aut sigillaverit aliquid
cum aliqua specie ipsorum, et portaverit sigillationem super se, et intraverit in regionem
aliquam, vel provinciam, in qua cadunt fulgura multa, seu in terram pestiferam, nullatenus
nocebit ei, et fit tutus ab eis, quoniam non cadet fulgur super eum. Et haec quidem virtus est
multum divulgata et honorata inter homines.”
112
On the popularity of de vita, see Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. and trans. Carol
V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,
1989), introd.
113
Ibid., book 3, chap. 12:300–1.
114
Ibid. See also Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York:
Macmillan, 1929), 2:909–10, citing Pietro d’Abano and 4:224–5, citing Antonio Guaineri.
of hyacinth, Ficino remarks about these gems that “not only if they are
taken internally, but even if they touch the flesh, and, warmed thereby,
put forth their power, they introduce celestial force into the spirits by
which the spirits preserve themselves from plague and poison.”115 This
observation legitimizes the practice of wearing a gem, as it substanti-
ates the salutary power of gems that merely come into contact with the
skin and need not assimilate directly into the body. Ficino acknowl-
edges Serapion as his major source for this information. He notes that
“Serapion writes that he who wears a jacinth, or a signet made from one,
is safe from lightning; and that this power of it is very widely known.”116
In terms of both its particular emphasis on the properties of the hya-
cinth stone and its general ascription of divinity to the healing powers of
stones, Ficino’s De vita libri tres was a likely source for de’ Pomi.
Closer to his own time, de’ Pomi might well have drawn from the
work of Girolamo Cardano, who wrote extensively about precious
stones in the seventh book of his encyclopedia of natural history, De
subtilitate libri XXI.117 It is especially noteworthy that so many of the
stones Cardano studied were understood by contemporary Europeans as
being the modern-day equivalents of biblical gems. Near the beginning
of his extended essay on precious stones, Cardano writes that “most
excellent among gems are green smaragdus, red carbunculus, sparkling
adamas, milky pearl, dark-blue sapphire, golen chrysolithus, and var-
ious types of opal . . . hyacinth may be added to these.”118 Nearly all
of these stones were taken by biblical commentators, lexicographers,
and natural scientists to represent either the stones in the high priest’s
breastplate or those in Revelation. Cardano upholds the medical efficacy
of stones, stating that “not only are they alive, but they also alleviate
sicknesses, old age, even death.”119 Moving from general observations
115
Ficino, Three Books on Life, 300–1.
116
Ibid. The Serapion quotation comes from Liber aggregatus in medicinis simplicibus (Venice,
1503), chap. 398, pp. 156.4–157.1–2, as cited in Ficino, Three Books on Life, 440 n. 7.
117
On Cardano as a physician, see Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror.
118
Cardano, De Subtilitate, 595: “Praecipuae inter gemmas, smaragdus viridis, carbunculus
rubens, adamas candidus, margarita lactea, sapphirus caeruleus, chrysolithus aureus, opalus
varius. Precia eo ordine nunc apud nos se habent, nisi quod opalus smaragdum sequitur. His
hyacinthus addatur.”
119
Ibid., 595: “neque solum vivunt, sed morbos, et senectutem, et post etiam mortem
patiuntur.”
about gems to specific remarks on their individual properties, Cardano

discusses hyacinth at length and calls upon the testimony of familiar
medieval authorities. He writes that “men of worthy authority attrib-
ute to Hyacinth much praise. Among them is Serapio, whom in [my]
commentary on Ars medica I taught was [the same person as] John of
Damascus, and who argues that [hyacinth] will render safe from light-
ning those who wear it – it will indeed protect them.120 And just as a wax
seal whose engravings are imprinted upon it, so will [hyacinth] make
its mark on those who wear it.”121 Following these remarks, Cardano
repeats the familiar wisdom that hyacinth keeps its wearers safe from
lightning and the plague. Even though Cardano is more concerned with
how the stone protects people from lightning and thunder, devoting sev-
eral pages to an examination of precisely how the stone does this, he also
states that the stone is capable of affording protection from pestilence.
Finally, as marker of the two men’s similar inclinations, Cardano himself
wore a hyacinth stone on a ring, just as de’ Pomi did. Cardano admitted
that “I am accustomed to wearing quite a large stone, and it seems not
to act as a soporific. My own stone is not crimson, which is the best sort,
but golden, and far from the best. The crimson [stone] is the best.”122 The
similarities between Cardano’s work on hyacinth and de’ Pomi’s defini-
tion of tarshish are evident, and they indicate that de’ Pomi may have
borrowed much from him.
Another contemporary scientific source de’ Pomi drew on for infor-
mation about the biblical stone tarshish may have been François de la
Rue’s De gemmis . . . explicatio. De la Rue, or Rueus as he was known
120
See “Ars curandi parva, quae est absolutissima medendi methodus,” in Cardano’s Opera
Omnia (1663), 7:143–98.
121
Cardano, De subtilitate, 597–8: “Hyacintho tribuunt non paucas laudes viri autoritate digni;
inter quos Serapio, quem nos Ioannem Damascenum in Commento super Artem Medicam
esse docuimus; quod a fulgure tutos reddat gestantes atque adeo tutos, ut vel cera quae illius
caelaturae subiecta fuerit, etiam illud gestata arceat.”
122
Ibid., 599: “Ego praegrandem soleo gestare, videturque aliquid, non tamen multum conferre
ad somnum; verum non puniceus hic meus est, atque ex illo optimo genere, sed aureus,
multumque ab optimo desciscens. Optimus enim puniceus est, qui raro lentis superat magni-
tudinem.” Cardano told the story of how he lost his ring on two other occasions. See De vita
propria liber, chap. 30, in Opera Omnia 1:21. For an English translation, see The Book of
My Life, trans. Jean Stoner (New York: New York Review Books, 2002), 101–2. See also
his collection of Paralipomena, book 3, chap. 6, “de portento quod mihi apparuit,” in Opera
Omnia 10:459–60.
throughout the Latin world, originally published his work in Paris

in 1547. De gemmis is organized not around the account of the high
priest’s breastplate in Exodus 28, but around John the Apostle’s vision
of the thirteen stones descending from the Jerusalem sky in the penul-
timate chapter of Revelation.123 Clearly, de la Rue’s scholarly point of
departure, as well as his main area of interest, is the mineralogy of the
New Testament rather than that of the Old Testament. Even so, many
of the stones mentioned in Revelation are identical to those in Exodus
or, more importantly, were conflated by Renaissance readers. Not sur-
prisingly, de la Rue’s entry on hyacinth bears some vivid similarities to
de’ Pomi’s. After describing the appearance of the stone at some length,
de la Rue suggests that, “moreover, when one looks at its features, it
thickens and restores stubborn coldness from bodies, brings on sleep,
guards powers (of the heart especially), and it is believed to keep away
the plague from those who wear it, bringing its hidden properties to
light.”124 As we have seen, de’ Pomi also believed in hyacinth’s ability
to ward off the plague. Beyond this, de la Rue mentions other medical
attributes of hyacinth, including its promotion of mental alacrity and its
defense against the evil portents of thunder.125 Lastly, de la Rue states
that hyacinth is most effective as a medicament when it is “hung around
the neck as an amulet close to the heart, so that it touches the skin.”126
In spite of the key similarities in de’ Pomi’s and de la Rue’s treatment
of the hyacinth stone, one must bear in mind that de la Rue’s discussion
of hyacinth was grounded in a study of New Testament, as opposed to
Old Testament, stones. Nevertheless, de la Rue may have been a source
123
François de la Rue, De gemmis aliquot, iis praesertim quarum d. Ioannis Apostolus in sua
Apocalypsi meminit, bound with Levinus Lemnius, Similitudinum ac parabolarum quae in
Bibliis ex herbis atque arboribus desumuntur, dilucida explicatio (Frankfurt: ex officina
Paltheniana, 1596), 204.
124
Ibid., 219: “porro quod ad facultates spectat, pertinaci frigiditate corpora densare atque refi-
cere, somnum conciliare, virtutes (cordis praesertim) tueri, a populatim saeviente peste, cum
manifesta sua qualitate, tum recondita quadam proprietate gestantem adserere, creditur.”
125
Ibid. In the Middle Ages, Marbode of Rennes (1035–1123) wrote about similar uses for
the hyacinth stone in his De lapidibus, which was first printed in 1511. In a chapter of
De lapidibus entitled De iacinto, Marbode of Rennes writes, “sed quodcunque genus collo
suspendere possis, / Vel digito portes terras securus adibis, / Nec tibi pestiferae regionis causa
nocebit.” See John M. Riddle, Marbode of Rennes’ (1035–1123) De lapidibus (Wiesbaden:
Steiner, 1977), 52.
126
François de la Rue, De gemmis aliquot, 219: “Ideoque pro amuleto collo suspenditur e
regione cordis, ut cutem contingat.”
for de’ Pomi. Renaissance physicians believed deeply in the power of the
hyacinth stone. Medical men as different as François de la Rue, Girolamo
Cardano, and David de’ Pomi all wore it in nearly identical fashion.127
Some of de’ Pomi’s Christian contemporaries had a distinct approach
to the stones of the Bible, one that emphasized their theological sig-
nificance more than their medical properties. Andrea Bacci’s work on
this subject, published at Rome in the same year as de’ Pomi’s dictio-
nary, exemplifies this trend and provides a helpful point of comparison
and contrast.128 Even though Bacci emphasized doctrinal issues at the
expense of scientific ones, his main interest, even in a book on an osten-
sibly theological subject, was natural philosophy. Near the beginning of
Le XII Pietre Pretiose, Bacci noted that “it has always been the opinion
of the great [natural] philosophers, and has been confirmed by the holy
doctors of the church, that in all of nature works of greater wonder
than gems and precious stones are not to be seen.” For Bacci the church
fathers merely confirmed what science had already taught him. But his
book enriched patristic teachings with medieval and modern science.
Tsemah￵ David displays the same complementary relationship between
religious and scientific authority. Given the similarities between Bacci’s
and de’ Pomi’s work, and also the simultaneous publication of their
books, a closer look at Bacci’s Le XII Pietre Pretiose helps clarify the
dynamic between science and faith in Tsemah￵ David.
Andrea Bacci was an exact contemporary of de’ Pomi, and their
research interests were similar. Born in 1524 in Sant’Elipidio a Mare, in
Piceno, Bacci never earned a medical degree but, owing to papal inter-
vention, was granted a chair in 1567 in botany at the University of Rome
(La Sapienza). He remained in this position all his life and in 1587 was
named chief physician to Pope Sixtus V.129 That same year, Bacci wrote his
127
A few other examples include Lodovico Dolce, Trattato delle gemme che produce la natura
(Venice: G. Battista and G. Bernardo Sessa, 1565); Raniero Gnoli and Attilia Sironi, eds.,
Istoria delle pietre (undated Ms. from 1570s) (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 1996); Camillo
Leonardo (or Leonardi), Speculum lapidum (Venice: per Melchiorem Sessam et Petrum de
Rauanis sociis, 1516); and Scipione Vasolo’s 1577 Le miracolose virtù delle pietre pretiose
per salute del vivere humano, published by A. Mottana in Rendiconti Lincei 16:1 (2005):
19–73.
128
Andrea Bacci, Le XII Pietre Pretiose, le quali per ordine di dio nella santa legge, adornavano
i vestimenti del sommo Sacerdote (Rome: Giovanni Martinelli), 1587.
129
This biographical sketch comes from M. Crespi’s entry in DBI 5:29–30. For more on
Bacci, see Nancy Siraisi, “Rome: Medicine, Histories, Antiquities, and Public Health,” in
short work on the precious stones of the Bible, dedicated to Alessandro

Peretti, the cardinal of Montalto. It is striking that Bacci’s piece and de’
Pomi’s dictionary were published the same year and noteworthy that
Bacci’s and de’ Pomi’s title pages emphasize a focus on precious stones
and their occult secrets – even the very same stones.130 Bacci was widely
recognized for his mineralogical work. In a dedicatory poem to one of
Bacci’s later books, a natural history of wine in the ancient world, the
Neapolitan theologian Giovanni Francisco Lombardo recalled Bacci’s
celebration of stones in Exodus and praised him for “adorning nature
with his learned talents.”131
Bacci’s work on precious stones is in many ways similar to de’ Pomi’s.
The Roman botanist confirms de’ Pomi’s belief that merely looking at
precious stones gives strength to the observer. Bacci cites a passage from
book 3 of Josephus’s Antiquities explaining that, in biblical times, Jews
would bring these stones with them into battle. According to Josephus,
the glow of the stones would strengthen the Israelites’ resolve and weaken
that of their enemies.132 Bacci also proposes that those who wear stones
as ornaments or as fixtures in rings have wonderful access to occult
powers.133 These brief passages from Bacci’s preface correspond to de’
her History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 2007), 168–93, 318–26; Siraisi, “Historia, Natural History, Roman
Antiquity, and Some Roman Physicians,” in Pomata and Siraisi, Historia, 325–54, esp. 348
n. 14 for additional literature.
130
See title page of Tsemah￵ David, Latin section: “cum quadam Margaritarum, Unicornis,
Ambrae, Hycinti, nec non caeterorum lapidum praeciosorum nova, et minime obscura uni-
versali cognitione, quae tamquam arcana a quam plurimis existimabitur.” Bacci’s title page
announces discourses on “il diamante, le margarite, e l’oro . . . con un sommario dell’altre
pietre pretiose.”
131
Andrea Bacci, De naturali vinorum historia (Rome: ex typographia Nicolai Mutii, 1596),
sig. a4r: “Quas gemmas celebrat sacra Exodus, inde recenset, / adiectis quas Rex possidet
Aethiopum. / Occultas rerum caussas penetratque metalla, / naturae ut pateant plurima
facta palam. / Describit radio cunctarum exordia rerum, / dira venena docet, praebet et
antidota. / Quis non Andreion vocet hunc, Iasoline, virum, quem / tot Natura ornat dotibus
ingenii?”
132
Bacci, Le XII Pietre Pretiose, 2: “Onde Iosepho nel 3 dell’Antichità fa testimonianza essere
stato antico costume de gli Hebrei di comparire nelle guerre loro co’l confalone Sacerdotale
di queste xii gemme, perchè, prima che l’essercito si movesse, si vedeva uscirne tanto splen-
dore, che abbagliati i nimici, i suoi, all’incontro, pigliavano animo della vittoria et di haver
Dio in aiuto loro.” See Josephus, Antiquities 8:9.
133
Bacci, Le XII Pietre Pretiose, 3: “queste veramente si hanno a proporre per le principali
virtù delle Pietre pretiose, le quali a vederle o portarle addosso, o ne gli anelli, o in altri
ornamenti si dicono operare mirabilmente per proprietate occulta.”
Pomi’s similar claims and testify to the wide diffusion of these ideas.
They suggest that de’ Pomi was not alone among sixteenth- century
Italian physicians in believing that the precious stones of the Bible had
miraculous and medically benevolent powers.
But Bacci’s work departs from de’ Pomi’s in two important ways:
both his translation of names for biblical stones and his analysis of their
secret properties are quite different. In the case of tarshish, Bacci fol-
lows the Vulgate and translates it as chrisolito. The divergence between
de’ Pomi and Bacci is not surprising. The identification of this stone
was a troublesome matter for sixteenth-century Italians: Sante Pagnini,
Marco Marini, Andrea Bacci, David de’ Pomi, and Abraham Portaleone
all came to different conclusions regarding its proper identity. Some nat-
ural philosophers, such as Abraham Yagel, even proposed two transla-
tions for the Hebrew term.134 This multiplicity of opinions regarding the
stones’ true identity, especially in Jewish communities, led Augustinus
Steuchus to muse in his Veteris testamenti recognitio of 1529 that Jews
were “more casual than all other people in contriving knowledge of
these matters.”135 Bacci’s entry on chrisolito, for example, is short and
says little about the medicinal properties of the stone. After listing pos-
sible alternative names for the stone, he notes, in step with de’ Pomi,
that the best version of the stone comes from Ethiopia, while lesser
versions originate in Arabia. At the very end of the entry, he observes
that the stones “guard against evil spells most effectively when they are
worn on the left arm.”136 Apart from this mention of the health benefits
of chrisolito, Bacci says nothing else about the stone’s ability to protect
people from the plague.
134
Abraham Yagel, ‫( בית יער הלבנון‬The House of the Forest of Lebanon), Oxford, Bodleian Ms.
Reggio 10, chap. 69, ‫( הטור הרביעי תרשיש שוהם וישפה‬The fourth row: tarshish, shoham, and
yaspeh), where on 161v and 162r he translates tarshish in two different ways: ‫( היאצינטו‬hya-
cinth), which he may have got from de’ Pomi, and ‫( הקריסוליטו‬chrysolithus), respectively. For
more on Yagel and his encyclopedia of natural philosophy, see Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic
and Science.
135
Augustinus Steuchus, Veteris testamenti recognitio (Lyon: Gryphius, 1531 [1529]), 464:
“cum in his lapidibus interpretandis Hieronymus semper Septuaginta sequatur, et eorum in
ea re approbarit aeditionem, non mihi visum est affere in medium, quae de his lapidibus ab
Hebraeis dicuntur: cum et ipsi vehementer a Septuaginta et Hieronymo discrepent, et levior
apud eos de hisce rebus inveniatur cognitio, quam omnes alias gentes.”
136
Bacci, Le XII Pietre Pretiose, 15: “Conservano dalle fascinationi, massime portati nel brac-
cio sinistro.”
Bacci analyzes the more quotidian health benefits of other stones in

the high priest’s breastplate. In fact, precious stones had a secure place in
Galenic medicine as remedies for a variety of afflictions.137 Bacci notes,
for example, that topatio (Hebrew: pitdah) is effective against “sadness
and other afflictions of the soul” and that it “mitigates against anger
and fury.”138 Smeraldo, similarly, when “worn around the neck, cures the
Hemitritean fever, the worst sort.”139 He is also interested in etymologies,
clearly specious to the modern reader,140 and in Jewish commentators’
views of certain stones – even if only to dispute them. For example,
discussing sapphiro, Bacci remarks “although some Jewish interpreters
describe it as being of similar color to crystal, and others to purpura
nigra, which is the color of violets, these commentators are mistaken; it
is common knowledge that sapphire is the color of the air in the clearest
sky.”141
The ultimate difference between these two natural philosophers is
that while de’ Pomi focuses on the scientific and curative properties of
stones, Bacci is concerned above all with the spiritual significance and
doctrinal relevance of the stones’ identity. Labeling himself a “Christian
philosopher” in his work on unicorns, Bacci’s allegiance was to the
dominant figures in Christian thought.142 Accordingly, when he assessed
the significance of the names of biblical stones, Bacci faithfully follows
137
See Galen’s account of the medicinal uses of stones in his De simplicium medicamento-
rum temperamentis ac facultatibus libri XI, book 9, chap. 2, in C. G. Kühn, ed., Opera,
12:192–208. Hyacinth is prescribed, along with jaspis, indico, and other stones, as a cure
for a variety of ailments. See ibid., 207. See also Galen’s list of items that can be substituted
as medicaments for various gemstones in De succedaneis liber, in ibid., 19:734–45. In this
later work, which may be pseudo-Galenic but was transmitted with Galen’s works, beryllus
may be substituted “pro lapide hyacintho,” indicating that hyacinth was a popular enough
remedy not only for Galen to mention it but for him to list a substitute for it. Ibid., 735.
138
Bacci, Le XII Pietre Pretiose, 8: “vale contra la mestitia, et altre passioni dell’animo et but-
tata per esperienza nell’acqua bollente, fa cessare maravigliosamente il bollore, onde alcuni
hanno preso occasione di dire che mitiga la colera, et l’ira.”
139
Ibid., 9: “Tenuto al collo sana la febre Hemitriteo, pessima febre.”
140
For example, he claims that sardius is so called because it comes from Sardinia (Sardo).
Ibid., 7.
141
Ibid., 11: “et benche alcuni interpreti Hebrei lo descrivano di colore simile al cristallo,
et altri alla purpura nigra, che è il color delle viole, questi però s’ingannano, perche di com-
mun parere il sapphiro è del color dell’aria nel cielo chiarissimo.” I have not been able to
locate Bacci’s source of information regarding these “Jewish commentators.”
142
See Andrea Bacci, L’Alicorno (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1573), 53: “essendo io Filosofo
Christiano e curioso di sapere, e di scrivere la verità sopra a tutti i miei desiderii, mi ritrat-
terrò molto volentieri.”
Saint Jerome and Epiphanius, the fourth-century bishop of Cyprus who

wrote an influential work on precious stones in Revelation. For exam-
ple, regarding the diaspro, Bacci explains that it is mentioned in Exodus
“in order to prefigure the heavenly Jerusalem in the Apocalypse with
the fundamentals and marvels of the diaspro, since the strength of the
diaspro and the grandeur of the science of God overpower and over-
come all false doctrine.”143 For de’ Pomi, the ultimate strength of bibli-
cal stones lay in their curative powers, not their theological ones. Bacci
shared a belief with de’ Pomi that attending to the natural products of
the biblical world could positively change present-day circumstances.
As were the church fathers Jerome and Epiphanius, to whom Bacci
paid eloquent deference, Bacci was chiefly concerned with the symbolic
features of the high priest’s stones. In fact, the Roman botanist under-
took his work because those theologians deemed the precious stones
worthy of investigation.144 As such, it is not surprising that Bacci’s iden-
tifications of the stones match those of the Vulgate precisely; taking
his lead from Epiphanius, he had no reason to deviate from church
tradition. In spite of Bacci’s and de’ Pomi’s many similar tendencies
and overlapping professional interests, their different means of employ-
ment affected their approach toward the scientific content of scripture.
Bacci lived in Rome and, in addition to his teaching responsibilities at
La Sapienza, was working as the chief physician to Pope Sixtus V when
he published his book on precious stones. His personal circumstances
led him to follow the fathers of the church and refrain from specula-
tion on the medical and magical applications of biblical products. Still,
to understand the role patristic writings played in Italian naturalists’
efforts to understand the precious stones of the Bible, we must consider
the availability of those writings in de’ Pomi’s and Bacci’s time, as well
as their significance.
Bacci was not alone in introducing his work as a continuation of
patristic writings; many other Italian naturalists grounded their inves-
tigations of science and scripture in a discussion of one or more fathers
143
Bacci, Le XII Pietre Pretiose, 12: “Onde nell’Apocalisse vien figurata la celeste Hierusalem
c’habbia i fondamenti, et le muraglia di diaspro, significando secondo S. Hieronimo, che la
forze del diaspro e la grandezza della scienza di Dio espugna et supera ogni falsa dottrina.”
144
Ibid., sig. +2r–v: “la quale tratta delle Dodici pietre pretiose, che, secondo la interpretatione
di S. Gieronimo e di S. Epifanio Arcivescovo antico di Cipri, si legge, che per ordine di Dio
nella Sacra Scrittura, se ne dovesse ornare il manto del Sommo Sacerdote.”
of the church.145 De’ Pomi may have turned to their writings as well.
We know that learned Jews in sixteenth-century Italy such as Azariah
de’ Rossi read patristic writings, especially in the new Latin translations
of Greek patristic works coming out in the sixteenth century.146 And
Christian scholars also directed an increasing amount of attention to the
church fathers as the century wore on.147
Neither Epiphanius nor Jerome, the two church fathers Bacci openly
acknowledges as direct influences, identifies tarshish as hyacinth or
describes the medical benefits of that stone. Epiphanius, in his short
work on the precious stones of the Bible, which was available in several
editions by the middle of the sixteenth century,148 was concerned above
all else with describing their appearance and predicting their efficacy in
aiding “pious meditations.”149 Because Epiphanius focused his attention
on the spiritual properties of the stones, and because his renderings of
their names remained in the mainstream of Catholic tradition owing to
their identical match with the language of the Vulgate, Epiphanius was a
trusted source for scholars like Bacci.
Jerome, a slightly younger contemporary of Epiphanius, had not
defined tarshish as hyacinth but praised it as a “most precious stone”
and speculated that it might be a variant of ligurius, the stone he desig-
nates as leshem. In a letter on the priest’s garments, Jerome w ondered
why hyacinth, “a most precious stone, is not included among them,
unless perhaps it is another name for ligurius.”150 And, in general,
Jerome d isplayed very little interest in the medical properties of stones.
145
See Chapter 1 where I discuss how Aldrovandi cast his work on nature and the Bible as a
response to Augustine’s De doctrina christiana.
146
Azariah de’ Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, trans. and ed. Joanna Weinberg (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2001), introd., xxxviii–xxxix.
147
See Eric Cochrane, Italy, 1530–1630 (London: Longman, 1988), 189; Pio Paschini, “Un car-
dinale editore: Marcello Cervini,” in his Cinquecento Romano e Riforma Cattolica (Rome:
Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenaei Lateranensis, 1958), 185–217.
148
Conrad Gesner, De omni rerum fossilium genere (Zurich: Gesner, 1565), in which one finds
De gemmis XII Rationalis, attributed to Epiphanius. Quoted in Petrus Franciscus Fogginius,
ed., S. Epiphanii . . . De XII Gemmis Rationalis summi sacerdotis Hebraeorum liber (Rome:
Typis Zempellianis, 1743). For a modern edition, see Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus . . .
series graeca, (Paris: J.–P. Migne, 1857–99), 43:310.
149
De duodecim gemmis quae erant in veste Aaronis liber, in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 43:294–
304, 294: “colores sive formas, locos, et quae faciunt inde ad pietatem meditationes.”
150
Epistola LXIV ad Fabiolam, “De veste sacerdotali,” in PL 22:607–22, 616: “Satisque miror
cur hyacinthus pretiosissimus lapis in horum numero non ponatur, nisi forte ipse est alio
nomine ‘ligurius.’”
As they were for Epiphanius, homiletics were his primary interest.

Jerome did mention Symmachus, the late second-century translator of
the Bible into Greek, and he was aware of gaps between Symmachus’s
rendering of the names of the stones and his own. He noted, for exam-
ple, that Symmachus did not translate bareqet as smaragdus but pre-
fers ceraunius.151 In another place, Jerome directly took up the issue of
whether tarshish is best understood as chrysolithus or hyacinth and sug-
gested that the very word tarshish expressed the blueness of the sea.
According to Jerome, the stone took its name from this color.152 The fact
that he did so is evidence that, from late antiquity to the sixteenth cen-
tury, the proper identification of this stone was a matter of controversy.
But without question the church father who took the most sustained
interest in hyacinth was Symmachus, of whom sixteenth-century schol-
ars were well aware. Symmachus rendered the Hebrew term tarshish
as hyakinthos in virtually all instances for which we have record of
his work. Symmachus’s Greek translation of the Bible dates from the
late second century. Scholars have long debated Symmachus’s transla-
tions as well as his religious identity. Eusebius and Jerome believed that
he was an Ebionite, or Jewish heretic. Epiphanius maintained that he
was a Samaritan who converted to Judaism.153 In the nineteenth cen-
tury, Abraham Geiger concluded that certain Midrashic renderings in
Symmachus’s translations proved his status as an Ebionite.154 Most mod-
ern scholars have agreed.155
Whatever his religious identity, Symmachus was the only ancient trans-
lator of the Bible into Greek who rendered tarshish as h yakinthos.156
151
Ibid., 615.
152
Epistola XXXVII ad Marcellam, in PL 22:462: “Quaeras si Tharsis lapis chrysolithus sit,
aut hyacinthus, ut diversi interpretes volunt, ad cuius coloris similitudinem Dei species scri-
batur, quare Jonas propheta Tharsis ire velle dicatur (Jonae 1) et Salomon et Josaphat in
Regnorum libris naves habuerint, quae de Tharsis solitae sint exercere commercia (2 Reg.
10). Ad quod facilis est responsio ομώνυμον esse vocabulum, quod et Indiae regio ita appel-
letur et ipsum mare, quia caeruleum sit et saepe solis radiis percussum colorem supra dicto-
rum lapidum trahat, a colore nomen acceperit.”
153
Alison Salvesen, Symmachus in the Pentateuch (Manchester: Journal of Semitic Studies
Monographs 15, 1991).
154
Abraham Geiger, “Symmachus der Übersetzer der Bibel,” Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft
und Leben 1 (1862): 39–64.
155
Salvesen, Symmachus in the Pentateuch, 297.
156
Frederick Field, ed., Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt sive veterum interpretum
graecorum in totum Vetus Testamentum fragmenta, 2 vols. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms
Even in biblical passages where tarshish is employed as an adjective

rather than as a noun, Symmachus renders it as some variant of hya-
cinth.157 Scholars as varied as Augustinus Steuchus, the exegete, and
Antonio Carafa, the primary editor of the Sixtine Greek Bible, knew of
Symmachus’s Bible translation and occasionally accepted his interpreta-
tion. The Jewish convert to Christianity Sixtus Senensis wrote an entry
on Symmachus in his Bibliotheca Sancta.158 Although I have not yet
found any printed text from de’ Pomi’s lifetime that notes Symmachus’s
translation of tarshish as hyakinthos, we do know of manuscripts that
contain Symmachus’s glosses. Natalio Fernandez Marcos has reported
that between 1565 and 1575 the library of a certain Konstantinos
Barenos contained a complete translation of the Psalms by Symmachus
and other bits of the Old Testament.159 And Steuchus and Carafa are
merely two examples of de’ Pomi’s contemporaries who were aware
of Symmachus’s work. Ulisse Aldrovandi approvingly quotes one of
Symmachus’s glosses, and even prefers one of Symmachus’s renderings
of a precious stone in Ezekiel to that of Jerome.160 Aldrovandi’s patron
Gabriele Paleotti mentions Symmachus as well in a badly damaged let-
ter in Bologna’s Archivio Isolani.161 Augustinus Steuchus observed that
the “true septuagint was most holy among the Jews . . . but it did not
satisfy Symmachus or Theodotion, who established other interpreta-
tions.”162 Steuchus knew that Symmachus’s renderings of the Hebrew
Bible presented an alternative to the Septuagint. He also stated that
he had access to various Greek Bible commentaries in the library of
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1964 [1865]), 1:131, Exodus 28:20: ‫תרשיש‬, chrysolithus; Origen:

χρυσόλιθος; Symmachus: ὑάκινθος.
157
Ibid., 2:770, Ezek 1:16: ‫כעין תרשיש‬: Vulgate: quasi aspectus chrysolithi. Origen: ὡς εἰδος
θαρσείς. Aquila: ὡς ὀφθαλμός χρυσολίθου. Symmachus: ὡς ὅρασις ὑακίνθου. Jerome: “Tharsis,
quam nos in mare vertimus: Aquila hyacinthum posuit, qui lapis caeli habet similtudinem.”
See ibid., n. 42.
158
Sextus Sinensis, Bibliotheca Sancta, 2 vols. (Venice: Gryphius, 1566), 1:471.
159
Natalio Fernández Marcos, Introducción a las versiones griegas de la Biblia (Madrid:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1979), 110.
160
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 91, De lucentibus, “Excellentissimo ac valde Reverendissimo Alfonso
Paleoto Canonico S. Petri Cathedralis Ecclesiae dignissimo,” 372r–377r, 372r: “Et novem
istae gemmae Ezechielis ex quatuor ordinibus tres occupabant: nam in primo ordine
erant sardius, topatius, smaragdus. Symmachus dissentit in Smaragdo Corauneum pro eo
transferens.”
161
Bologna, Archivio Isolani, F. 60 /134, CN 88, p. 401.
162
Steuchus, Veteris testamenti . . . recognitio, sig. a2v.
the Venetian cardinal Domenico Grimani: “Greek fathers, who were

most vigilant in matters of sacred scripture, are commonly cited, for
we have a great number [of them] in the divine library of the most
learned man, the most excellent in all virtues, Domenico Grimani.”163
While it cannot be proved that de’ Pomi himself had access to Grimani’s
collection – de’ Pomi was a small child when Grimani died, and parts
of his collection were dispersed soon after his death164 – we know from
Moritz Steinschneider’s research that Grimani had cordial relations
with Jews and even hired Abraham de Balmes as his Hebrew teacher. De
Balmes dedicated a 1523 Latin composition to Grimani.165 Finally, we
know that de’ Pomi’s Jewish compatriot Azariah de’ Rossi was famil-
iar with Symmachus’s works – even if only at secondhand. In his Meor
Enayim (Light of the eyes), de’ Rossi wrote that “the books which were
translated by the seventy elders did not retain their true meaning in
the Greek language. And so Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion made
other translations which were different from it.” In contrast to Aquila
and Theodotion, de’ Rossi suggested, Symmachus “gave more consider-
ation to the meaning of the text.”166
And there is one final way de’ Pomi might have come across
Symmachus’s rendering. A corpus of eleventh-century Greek glosses
to the sixth-century Codex Ambrosianus testifies to the persistence of
Symmachus’s translations throughout the Middle Ages. In these texts,
a Jewish glossator broke from the standard rendering of tarshish as
163
Ibid., 9–10.
164
The best source for information about Grimani’s library, especially his Greek manuscripts,
is in Aubrey Diller, Leendert G. Westerink, and Henry D. Saffrey, eds., Bibliotheca graeca
manuscripta cardinalis Dominici Grimani (1461–1523) (Venice: edizione della laguna,
2003). Upon Grimani’s death in 1523, he bequeathed part of his library to his nephew
Marino Grimani and the rest to the Augustinian monastery Sant’Antonio di Castello.
Eventually the latter was absorbed into the library of San Marco. In 1597, for example,
when the Holy Office under the direction of Cardinal Agostino Valier surveyed the con-
tents of religious libraries in Venice, 112 of the original 392 Greek manuscripts were still
available in the monastery’s collection, which was nominally open to the public. See Marino
Zorzi’s presentazione to this work, pp. v–xi.
165
Moritz Steinschneider, “Une dédicace d’Abraham de Balmes au Cardinal Dom. Grimani,”
REJ 5 (1882): 112. Most recently on de Balmes, see Ennio de Bellis, “Cenni sulla dottrina
della demonstratio nel pensiero di ‘Avraham de Balmes,” in Fabrizio Lelli, ed., Gli ebrei nel
Salento: secoli IX–XVI (Galatina: Congedo Editore, 2013), 285–99 and works cited there.
166
Azariah de’ Rossi, Light of the Eyes, 172. De’ Rossi likely learned this from Jerome, Praefatio
in librum chronicorum Eusebii. See PL 27:35–6.
chrysolithus and translated the Hebrew stone as hyakinthos.167 As de’

Pomi sought to import a corpus of scientific knowledge into the camp
of scriptural studies, Symmachus’s translations may have provided a
valued link.
Though de’ Pomi roamed far and wide to find information about
the stones of the high priest’s breastplate, there were sources within his
own cultural tradition that may have inspired him as much as Albertus
Magnus or Girolamo Cardano did to wear the diacinto stone as a pro-
phylactic against the plague. A Talmudic legend in the tractate Bava
Batra relates that “a precious stone hung from the neck of Abraham, our
father. Whoever looked upon it was instantly cured.”168 Although de’
Pomi nowhere mentions this passage, early modern Jews, in spite of the
ban against printing the Talmud in Italy after 1554, knew it well.169 De’
Pomi, as an educated Jew, was almost certainly aware of this passage. It
attests to a belief, enshrined in one of Judaism’s canonical texts, in the
curative properties of precious stones. De’ Pomi may have drawn from
the Talmud to buttress his belief, buoyed by scientific learning, in the
curative properties of stones. Though it may have legitimized his own
practice of hanging a stone around his neck, the Talmudic legend about
Abraham did not specify what stone it was.170 As we have seen, de’ Pomi
had to look far beyond classical Jewish traditions and medieval Hebrew
lexicography to equate hyacinth with tarshish and augment his faith in
the latter with the science of the former. De’ Pomi and his Jewish col-
leagues such as Abraham Portaleone balanced contemporary learning
with received tradition. Such a commitment was a constant challenge, a
stimulus to further study, and an exercise that strengthened their faith.
167
The best study of this text is the unpublished tesi di laurea of Mariachiara Fincati, Il
restauro medievale dell’Esateuco ambrosiano A 147 inf. (Milan: Università Cattolica del
Sacro Cuore, 2008). See also her “Per la storia dell’Esateuco ambrosiano A 147 inf.,” Aevum
83 (2009): 299–339.
168
BT Bava Batra 16v: ‫נתרפא‬ ‫אבן טובה היתה תלויה בצוארו של א"א שכל אחד הרואה אותה מיד‬
169
See Isaiah Sonne, “Journeys through the Place Where Reality and the Book – History and
Bibliography – Are Adjacent” (Hebrew), in Alexander Marx Jubillee Volume (New York:
Jewish Theological Seminary, 1950), 209–35. See also Amnon Raz Krakotzkin, The Censor,
the Editor and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the
Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
170
A very similar use for the Bezoar stone is attested in British Library, Ms. Oriental 2396. The
author of that manuscript writes (135r): ‫ואם יתלו ממנו בצואר הנער שלא נרפא ולא אירע לו מאורע יציל‬
‫“ אותו מהמאורעים‬If they hang it [Bezoar] upon the neck of a young person who was not cured,
and if no incident befell him, it will rescue him from any further incidents.”
Conclusion
For David de’ Pomi, Greek traditions and empirical evidence connected
premodern science to scripture, allowing him to import a body of scien-
tific knowledge into scriptural studies. While he professed his allegiance
to medieval Hebrew lexicography, he supplemented that tradition with
other sources. For his work on the precious stones of the Bible, at least,
de’ Pomi favored medieval and early modern Latin lapidaries as well as
a corpus of medieval Hebrew writings on precious stones. Oral tradi-
tions may have informed de’ Pomi’s views, too. Venice was crowded
with Jews from all over the Mediterranean world, and as writers in both
the sixteenth and twentieth centuries emphasized, rendering the names
of biblical stones into the vernacular was a common practice – and one
that each community performed differently.
De’ Pomi’s sensitivity to and interest in Greek terminology for the
Bible’s recondite vocabulary is representative of broader trends in Italian
Jewish culture of the late Renaissance.171 Joanna Weinberg has clearly
shown how important the Septuagint was in Jewish culture in the
middle of the sixteenth century and has argued that Azariah de’ Rossi
was familiar with the Greek Bible in spite of the fact that he did not
know Greek very well.172 Abraham Portaleone and his teacher Moses
Provenzali used Italianized Greek words to gloss scripture.173 The physi-
cian and antiquarian Girolamo Mercuriale invoked a line from Horace
171
See Moses A. Shulvass, “The Knowledge of Antiquity among the Italian Jews of the
Renaissance,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 18 (1948–9):
291–300. See also Joanna Weinberg, “Azaria de’ Rossi and Septuagint Traditions,” Italia
(1985): 7–35.
172
It is worth noting that in spite of his considerable learning de’ Rossi lacked a university
degree and was therefore deprived of the best opportunity to study Greek. De’ Rossi himself
lamented that he did not know Greek as well as he wished: ‫ואני הצעיר לא ידעתי ספר ולשון יוני כאבת‬
‫ נפשי‬Me’or Enayim (Mantua, 1573–5), 2. In spite of this deficiency, he discusses the rabbis’
use of Greek in several places (Weinberg trans., 577–8, 596) and is also aware of differences
between literary and spoken Greek, which he refers to as ‫ לשון מיוחד להעלות על ספר‬and ‫לשון‬
‫ ידבר בו איש אל רעהו‬respectively. See Weinberg trans. 687 and Cassel edition (Vilna: Y. R. Rom,
1866), 462.
173
Portaleone cultivated his Greek studies in other settings, too. In several letters in his col-
lected medical consilia, Portaleone investigates Greek expressions, even when he wrote
to other Jews. See, for example, his 1569 consilium to Abraham Provenzali, in Abrahami
Portaleonis medici mantuani hebrei responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber,
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. Latin 13004, 293r–v.
when he urged students to study Greek “day and night” in his popular
work on medical studies.174 His language may have reminded biblically
literate Jews of similar wording in a scriptural exhortation to study day
and night.175
In sixteenth-century Italy the examination of precious stones from the
Bible was an intellectual endeavor that stood at the intersection of med-
icine, antiquarianism, and biblical studies. For de’ Pomi, and for other
Italian physicians as well, medical science and biblical studies had a
reciprocal relationship. De’ Pomi’s scientific training helped him under-
stand scripture by introducing him to Latin books and traditions that,
properly understood, could reveal the Bible’s hidden meaning. And his
education at Perugia instilled a lifelong interest in Greek that stimulated
de’ Pomi’s curiosity about Greek renderings of the Bible as indicative
of the text’s true meaning. But de’ Pomi’s fascination with biblical gem-
stones was not merely bookish; it was nurtured by the commercial set-
ting he lived in. His professional experience as a physician put him into
regular contact with several Venetian merchants who dealt in precious
stones. In de’ Pomi’s mind, some of those stones, including hyacinthus,
became physical instantiations of biblical words. However, university
education and medical culture did not merely offer their services to bibli-
cal commentary; they were enriched by biblical traditions, too. De’ Pomi
believed that a biblical product whose arcane properties were exposed
by modern science could be the best cure for disease. And in a time
of devastating plagues such as the one that struck Venice in 1571–2,
medical practitioners of all sorts enthusiastically sought new remedies.
When Andrea Bacci invoked the “science of God” and its “grandeur”
in his discussion of the high priest’s stones, he articulated a belief that
the natural philosophy of the biblical world could solve contemporary
problems. He easily could have been speaking for his Jewish colleague
from Spoleto.
174
See Richard J. Durling, “Girolamo Mercuriale’s De modo studendi,” Osiris, 2nd ser., 6
(1990): 181–95, 188: “Ceterum Graeci ii sunt de quibus id Horatium dicere cogor ‘Nocturna
versate manu, versate diurna.’”
175
Joshua 1:8: ‫ולילה‬ ‫והגית בו יומם‬
4
Jewish-Christian Relations in Sixteenth-Century Italy
Abraham Portaleone’s Correspondence

with His Gentile Colleagues
In the 1580s and 1590s, Abraham Portaleone, a Jewish physician of

Mantua, corresponded with several of his Catholic colleagues. The
very fact that Portaleone corresponded with Catholic physicians such
as Giovanni Battista Cavallara and Alessandro Magno presents new
evidence of sustained social and intellectual contact between Jews and
Christians in early modern Italy. Their letters also augment our knowl-
edge of key topics in late Renaissance natural philosophy, such as alimen-
tation and embryology. Most importantly, Portaleone’s correspondence
with Cavallara and Magno suggests that the boundaries separating reli-
gious scholarship from scientific research were porous and that religious
differences promoted rather than impeded the free flow of information
and ideas across those boundaries.
In sixteenth-century Italy, the medical profession promoted intercon-
fessional dialogue. Jewish and Christian medical students attended the
same universities, treated patients of different faiths,1 and, in some cit-
ies such as Mantua, were members of the same colleges of physicians.
They also wrote each other letters, which contain passages that signal
Throughout the sixteenth century Jews needed a license to treat Christian patients. Fewer
1
licenses were granted after 1555 during the papacy of Paul IV. In his bull “Contra medicos
hebraeos” (1581), Pope Gregory XIII strengthened the restrictions Paul IV had imposed.
See Harry Friedenwald, “Jewish Physicians in Italy: Their Relation to the Papal and Italian
States,” in his The Jews and Medicine, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1944), 2:551–612, esp. 582–9. Friedenwald includes a facsimile reproduction of Gregory
XIII’s bull between pages 550 and 551 and provides an English translation on pages 584–6.
A portion of this chapter previously appeared as “Abraham Portaleone and Alessandro Magno:
Jewish and Christian Correspondents on a Monstrous Birth,” European Journal of Jewish
Studies 5:1 (2011): 53–66.
153
familiar and enduring relationships. To the historian of Jewish-Christian

relations in the premodern period, these exchanges indicate two impor-
tant things. First, they suggest that some Jews and Christians formed and
sustained intellectual alliances that were not predicated on, or poisoned
by, interfaith polemic. Second, they reveal how medicine catalyzed this
form of social intercourse more than any other profession. Of all the
professional settings in the early modern world where educated men of
different religions interacted, medicine facilitated the closest collabora-
tion between Jews and Christians. And of all the places in early modern
Europe where medical men of different faiths enjoyed social intercourse,
northern Italy and especially the city of Mantua serve as prominent
examples.
Religious polemic is entirely absent from the letters Portaleone
exchanged with his Christian correspondents; antiquarian and natural
scientific exchanges dominate.2 Still, religious scholarship was not absent
from these exchanges. Issues of faith instigated them and steered epis-
tolary conversations in new philosophical and philological directions.
For example, considerations of permitted and prohibited foods during
the Passover holiday stimulated Portaleone’s thinking about ancient
bread and shaped his response to Cavallara. Similarly, concerns about
ritual practices such as baptism, circumcision, and postpartum maternal
purification sparked Portaleone’s exchange with Magno about neonatal
viability and embryonic development. Though none of the correspon-
dents – Portaleone, Magno, or Cavallara – enunciated those concerns,
they are a key component of these letters.
Using religious texts in scientific deliberations, Portaleone and his cor-
respondents developed new applications for the former and stretched the
epistemological boundaries of the latter. Religious scholarship not only
flourished in the context of ritual, doctrine, and exegesis but took root
in the field of natural philosophy, too. And sixteenth-century natural
The correspondence of the Italian physician Girolamo Mercuriale with the Protestant physi-
2
cian Theodor Zwinger provides an intriguing parallel. In an extensive epistolary relationship

that Nancy Siraisi has studied in detail, the two medical men avoided religious topics enti-
rely. See Nancy G. Siraisi, “Mercuriale’s Letters to Zwinger and Humanist Medicine,” in
Alessandro Arcangeli and Vivian Nutton, eds., Girolamo Mercuriale: medicina e cultura
nell’Europa del Cinquecento. Atti del convegno ‘Girolamo Mercuriale e lo spazio scientifico
e culturale del Cinquecento’ (Forlì, 8–11 novembre 2006) (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2008),
77–95.
Jewish-Christian Relations 155
science needed new sources with which to answer a flurry of difficult

questions. The discoveries of new lands unknown to ancient geogra-
phers and naturalists revealed new species of flora and fauna that had to
be identified and understood. The spread of apparently unprecedented
diseases unfamiliar to classical physicians created a demand for novel
cures. And the metastasizing interest in ancient quotidiana that affected
doctors as much as it did lawyers, clergymen, and classicists spurred
researchers to find untapped resources with which they could satisfy
their curiosity.3 Among them were classical Jewish texts, especially the
Talmud.
Portaleone’s Medical Letters and Jewish-Christian

Relations in Renaissance Italy
Contemporary scholarship acknowledges that Jewish and Christian
physicians attended the same universities, belonged to the same colleges
of physicians, and even worked together in the early modern period.4
However, there is scarcely any published evidence of correspondence.
Portaleone’s medical letters provide plenty of such evidence. Abraham
Portaleone maintained epistolary relationships with many Christian
physicians, who were among the late sixteenth century’s most prolific
and respected medical doctors. Evidence of those relationships may be
found in Portaleone’s Book of Medical Responses and Consultations.5
That volume was “collected and compiled” in 1607 by Portaleone’s son
David, also a physician.6 It consists of 626 numbered folios and contains
3
On lawyers and their interest in all aspects of life in the ancient world, see Donald Kelley,
Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law and History in the French
Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), esp. 48.
4
On the first point especially, see David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific
Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 100–15 and
the bibliography cited there.
5
Excellentissimi D. Abrahami Portaleonis medici mantuani hebraei responsorum et consul-
tationum medicinalium liber, per me David eius filium collectae et conscriptae cum indice
locupletissimo anno MDCVII, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. Latin 13004. Henceforth
Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber.
6
For more on David and his medical practice, including the dispensations he received from
Clement VIII and Gregory XV to treat Christian patients, see Shlomo Simonsohn, History
of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1977), 646. Daniel Carpi
provides more information about David b. Abraham Portaleone, including a transcrip-
tion of his doctoral diploma, which was signed by Galileo Galilei, in “Jewish Graduates
an extensive six-folio index. Given its meticulous penmanship, substantial

index, and clear layout, this text was most likely a fair copy intended
for printed publication. Indeed, collections of medical case studies were
frequently printed in the sixteenth century and were extremely popular
among contemporary physicians.7 One such collection, by Portaleone’s
Italian colleague and correspondent Girolamo Mercuriale, appeared in
print under an almost identical title.8 But Portaleone’s medical letters
were never printed. At the bottom of the title page, a small printed note
pasted there states that the manuscript was bequeathed to the monas-
tery at St-Germain des Prés by the Duke of Coislin in 1732. By 1774 it
had been absorbed into the Bibliothèque du Roi’s collection,9 where it
remains today.
This chapter presents and analyzes correspondence between Portaleone
and two Catholic physicians: Alessandro Magno and Giovanni Battista
Cavallara. In addition to these letters, Portaleone’s Responsorum et con-
sultationum medicinalium liber includes epistles to and from Girolamo
Fabrizi da Aquapendente, Scipio Cassola, Marcello Donati, Girolamo
Mercuriale, and thirty-five others.10 The very fact that Portaleone cor-
responded with so many notable gentile physicians is itself worthy of
note. Scrutiny of Portaleone’s medical letters sharpens our knowledge of
Jewish-Christian relations in Renaissance Italy.
of the University of Padua During the 16th century” (Hebrew), in Be-tarbut ha-Renesans
u-ven h￵omot ha-geto: meh￵karim be-toldot ha-Yehudim be-Italyah ba-me’ot ha-14–17 (Tel
Aviv: University Publishing Project, 1989), 96–130, 101, 117. Some of David ben Abraham
Portaleone’s own consilia are preserved in a manuscript, now in Budapest, Library of
the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, entitled Consulti medici di Guglielmo Portaleone
Mantovano e d’altri Italiani dal MDLXXII al MDCLXV. David Kaufmann describes the
manuscript in “Jewish Ethical Wills: Texts and Additions,” JQR, o.s., 4:2 (1892): 333–41.
7
Danielle Jacquart, “Theory, Everyday Practice, and Three Fifteenth-Century Physicians,” in
Michael R. McVaugh and Nancy G. Siraisi, eds., Renaissance Medical Learning: Evolution
of a Tradition (Philadelphia: History of Science Society, 1991): 140–60.
8
Girolamo Mercuriale, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium tomus primus, nunc
primum a Michaele Columbo collectus et in lucem editus (Venice: apud Iolitos, 1587).
They were also published a year later as Liber responsorum et consultationum medici-
nalium nunc primum a Michaele Columbo collectus et in lucem editus (Basel: Conradum
Valdkirch, 1588). For discussion, see Siraisi, “Mercuriale’s Letters to Zwinger and Humanist
Medicine.”
9
See Léopold Delisle, Inventaire des manuscrits latin conservés à la Bibliothèque nationale
sous les numéros 8823–18613, et faisant suite à la séries dont le catalogue a été publié en
1774 (Paris: A. Durand et Pedone-Lauriel, 1863–71), 84.
10
For a list, see the index to Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, which I have
transcribed and included as Appendix I.
Historians who write about Jews living in Italy during the Renaissance
typically advance one of two possible lines of argument. Robert Bonfil, for
example, claims that Jews defined themselves in opposition to Christian
culture, which threatened the cohesion and continuity of Judaism and
Jewish life.11 Bonfil insists that once Jews were forced to live in north-
ern Italian ghettos, they embraced Christian culture more than they had
when they were integrated among their Christian neighbors.12 Cecil Roth,
on the other hand, paints a brighter picture of Jewish-Christian relations
in Renaissance Italy, which the recent work of Stephanie Siegmund con-
firms, although with modifications.13
Intellectual historians acknowledge that Jewish and Christian schol-
ars worked together and learned from each other in fifteenth- and six-
teenth-century Europe. For example, the German Jewish grammarian
Elias Levita (1468–1549) taught Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo Hebrew
in exchange for instruction in Greek.14 But there has been little debate
about who benefited most from those working relationships: historio-
graphical orthodoxy claims that Jewish-Christian intellectual exchanges
usually favored Christians. Frank Manuel, for example, has insisted that
Christians approached Jewish texts with the sole aim of furthering their
own theological ends.15 Similarly, David Ruderman has documented
11
Robert Bonfil, “Aspects of the Social and Spiritual Life of the Jews in the Venetian Territories
at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century” (Hebrew), Zion 41 (1976): 68–96.
12
Robert Bonfil, “Change in the Cultural Patterns of a Jewish Society in Crisis: Italian Jewry
at the Close of the Sixteenth Century,” Jewish History 3:2 (September 1988): 11–30; reprin-
ted in David B. Ruderman, ed., Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and
Baroque Italy (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 401–25, esp. 411–13. For
a response to Bonfil’s thesis, see David Ruderman, “The Italian Renaissance and Jewish
Thought,” in Albert Rabil Jr., ed., Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy,
vol. 1: Humanism in Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 382–433,
esp. 412–17.
13
Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1959);
Stephanie Siegmund, The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2006).
14
See Gérard E. Weil, Elie Lévita humaniste et massorète (1469–1549) (Leiden: Brill, 1963),
221–34. Also see Christoph Daxelmüller, “Zwischen Kabbala und Martin Luther – Elija
Levita Bachur, ein Jude zwischen den Religionen,” in Ludger Grenzmann et al., eds.,
Wechselseitige Wahrnehmung der Religionen im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit
1 (2009): 231–50; Deena Aranoff, “Elijah Levita: A Jewish Hebraist,” Jewish History
23 (2009): 17–40; Shimon Iakerson, “An Autograph Manuscript by Elijah Levita in St
Petersburg,” Studia Rosenthaliana 38 (2005–6): 178–85.
15
Frank E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, MA:
Havard University Press, 1992), 62.
how Elijah Delmedigo studied with Pico della Mirandola from 1480
to 1485, when Delmedigo translated Averroistic texts for his Christian
pupil. Those translations helped Pico formulate his syncretist philoso-
phy, the full expression of which may be found in his Theses of 1486.16
It was not only Christians who benefited from Jewish instruction and
Hebrew texts; Jewish culture was also shaped by its encounter with and
absorption of Christian intellectual traditions. As Robert Bonfil writes,
a cursory look at Renaissance Hebrew books “dispels all doubt that
their authors were conscious of sharing ideas, mentalities and even cul-
tural content with the Christian society in which they lived.”17 Through
various media – face-to-face interactions, published debates, and episto-
lary exchanges – the intellectual dialogue between Jews and Christians
in Renaissance Italy was extensive and embraced a variety of topics
outside the ken of interfaith polemic. As one recent historian put it, in
Renaissance Italy Jews and Christians related to one another in ways
that were “sociable, respectful, and amicable.”18
In early modern Italy, medicine was one field in which Jews and
Christians frequently encountered one another and where they were
often on cordial terms. An effective way to deepen our knowledge of
those encounters is by studying the letters Jewish and Christian physi-
cians exchanged. Portaleone’s consultationes and responsa allow us to do
that, and the specific content of those letters merits deeper exploration.
Before we examine the topics Portaleone and his interlocutors discussed,
it is essential to describe the genre to which those letters belonged.
Rare in medieval Europe, medical consilia containing narratives about
individual patients began to appear at the beginning of the fourteenth
16
David Ruderman, “The Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought,” in Albert Rabil Jr.,
ed., Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, vol. 1: Humanism in
Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 382–433, 387; Johannis Pici
Mirandulae conclusiones DCCCC (Rome: Eucharius Silber, 1486). For a modern edition,
see Bohdan Kieszkowski, ed., Conclusiones sive theses DCCCC Romae anno 1486 publice
disputandae, sed non admissae (Geneva: Droz, 1973). For a translation, see Stephen Alan
Farmer, ed. and trans., Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of
Traditional, Religious, and Philosophical Systems (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance
Texts and Studies, 1998).
17
Robert Bonfil, “Aliens Within: The Jews and Antijudaism,” in Thomas Brady, Heiko
Oberman, and James Tracey, eds., Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late
Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation, vol. 1: Structures and Assertions (Leiden: Brill,
1994), 263–97, 290.
18
Siegmund, The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence, 292.
century.19 During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries consilia evolved

into more historical, anecdotal, and epistolary forms. Several factors
hastened this evolution. First, court culture became much more vibrant.
At this time, more physicians were called to serve rulers at court – and
write for broader audiences. Abraham Portaleone was one of those phy-
sicians. Second, humanist trends that emerged in Italian culture in the
Renaissance influenced the medical profession and elevated the impor-
tance of and social value placed on good writing, especially in Latin.
Third, the civic environment of Renaissance Italy encouraged physicians
to share their writings with other sorts of professionals besides doc-
tors.20 Portaleone’s letters, for example, mention his consultations with
merchants, spice grinders, and scholars.
In the generation immediately preceding Portaleone’s, consilia became
vehicles for extended treatments of various subjects. Commercially, the
genre of medical letters achieved unprecedented popularity after 1556–7,
when Giunti published a successful compendium of five different writ-
ers of medical letters.21 In literary terms, Nancy Siraisi has shown how
in Renaissance Europe medical case studies evolved into a genre that
offered physicians the opportunity to pen “short essays on a variety
of freely chosen topics.”22 That evolution, in turn, was accelerated by
fifteenth-century developments in classical studies: as Anthony Grafton
19
See C. Crisciani, “L’individuale nella medicina tra medioevo e umanesimo: i consilia,”
in R. Cardini and M. Regoliosi, eds., Umanesimo e medicina: il problema dell’ “indivi-
duale” (Rome: Bulzoni, 1996), 1–32; C. Crisciani and Jole Agrimi, Les consilia médicaux
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1994).
20
See Nancy Siraisi, History, Medicine and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 65–7. For an older but still useful discussion
of consilia, see Pedro Laín Entralgo, La historia clinica: historia y teoría del relato pato-
gráfico (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1950). For the related
genre of medical observationes and curationes, see Gianna Pomata, “Praxis historialis: The
Uses of Historia in Early Modern Medicine,” in Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi, eds.,
Historia: Empricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2005), 105–46. See also Brian Nance, “Wondrous Experience as Text: Valleriola and the
Observationes Medicinales,” in Elizabeth Lane Furdell, ed., Textual Healing: Essays on
Medieval and Early Modern Medicine (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 101–18.
21
On this edition and its significance, see Ian Maclean, “The Medical Republic of Letters
before the Thirty Years’ War,” Intellectual History Review 18 (2008): 15–30, 21. For a
basic introduction to the genre in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Martin Stuber
and Hubert Steinke, “Medical Correspondence in Early Modern Europe: An Introduction,”
Gesnerus 61:3 (2004): 139–60.
22
Siraisi, History, Medicine and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning, 67.
proved years ago, Angelo Poliziano revolutionized European intellectual

culture by promoting and popularizing monographs that tackled spe-
cific subjects as opposed to the line-by-line commentaries that previously
dominated classical scholarship.23 This transformation in literate Italian
culture had a strong impact on medical writing.
Because they evolved to address such a diverse range of material,
consilia encouraged digression. In addition to routine advice concern-
ing common medical problems such as headaches, dizziness, menstrual
irregularities, fevers, and respiratory difficulties, Portaleone wrote
about optics, the Greek language, thermal baths, deafness in the ancient
world, and the connections between mood and health – he even lauded
the salubrious effects of chicken soup.24 As Ian Maclean has pointed
out, the wide range of material contained in late sixteenth-century med-
ical letters indicates that they were intended for a broad readership that
consisted not only of doctors but of natural philosophers and human-
ists, too.25 Had they been published in print, Portaleone’s Responsorum
et consultationum medicinalium liber might have attracted the atten-
tion of contemporary men of learning as well as future historians. And
that readership may well have been as eclectic as the work’s contents.
Regarding Girolamo Mercuriale’s letters to the Protestant Theodor
Zwinger, Nancy Siraisi stressed that they “reveal the circulation of
humanistic medical learning, regardless of political – and indeed reli-
gious – boundaries.”26 Similarly, Giuseppe Olmi has argued that natural-
ists’ letters “seemed to ignore all geographic, ideological, and religious
barriers.”27 Portaleone’s medical letters, which contain epistles to and
23
Anthony Grafton, “On the Scholarship of Politian and Its Context,” Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977): 150–88.
24
For this last topic, see “Consilium Excellentissimi Patris de catharro et melancholia hyppo-
chondriaca pro Domino Rachiello di Foa Regenti hebraeo,” in Portaleone’s Responsorum
et Consultationum Medicinalium Liber, 133r–135r at 134v, where Portaleone recommends
“il brodo del Gallo di 4 anni” for a variety of ailments. On the use of chicken soup as
a hospital remedy in Renaissance Italy, see Katharine Park and John Henderson, “‘The
First Hospital among Christians’: The Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova in Early Sixteenth-
Century Florence,” Medical History 35:2 (1991): 164–88, 183.
25
Ian Maclean, “The Medical Republic of Letters before the Thirty Years’ War,” Intellectual
History Review 18 (2008): 15–30, 21 and literature cited there.
26
Siraisi, “Mercuriale’s Letters to Zwinger and Humanist Medicine,” 94.
27
Giuseppe Olmi, “‘Molti amici in varij luoghi’: studio della natura e rapporti epistolari nel
secolo xvi,” Nuncius: annali di storia della scienza 6:1 (1991): 3–31, 8.
from Catholic, Protestant, Italian, and German physicians, substantiate

Olmi’s and Siraisi’s claim.28
While the digressive nature of Portaleone’s responsa et consultationes
may have been common in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth cen-
turies, other aspects of them were not. Most significantly, the depth of
Portaleone’s intellectual and social relations with Christian colleagues
would have been harder to imagine outside of Mantua. The political and
social policies of that city, established by the Gonzaga family and pro-
moted by its sixteenth-century scions Guglielmo and Vincenzo I, facili-
tated a closer degree of collaboration between Jews and Christians than
most Italian cities, let alone other European municipalities.29 Many Jews
populated early modern Hamburg, for example, but they were forbid-
den to worship in public or perform circumcisions within city limits.30
Additionally, Jews were barred from entering many guilds, and mem-
bership in the city’s college of physicians was restricted to Christians.31
Even closer to Mantua, in cities that were relatively tolerant of Jews
such as Venice, the College of Physicians became increasingly ortho-
dox and intolerant of religious minorities during the second half of
the sixteenth century. In 1550 Apollonio Massa redrew its statutes to
28
Most of these letters are to Catholic medical practitioners. Portaleone did exchange let-
ters with at least one German Protestant: the philologist Joseph Lange. See Responsorum
et consultationum medicinalium liber, 515r. Lange edited Martial’s epigrams, compiled
an index to Martial’s writings, and collected adages. See, respectively, M. Valerii Martialis
Epigrammaton libri XV (Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1595); Index omnium vocabulorum quae
in omnibus M. Valerii Martialis poematum libris reperiuntur (Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1595);
and Adagia sive Sententiae proverbiales graecae, latinae, germanicae ex praecipuis autori-
bus collectae (Strasbourg: Rihel, 1596). He also wrote to the German mathematician and
physician Andreas Schato (1539–1603). See Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium
liber, 142r.
29
On the Gonzaga court and its Jewish physicians, see Adalberto Pazzini, “La medicina alla
corte dei Gonzaga a Mantova,” in Mantova e i Gonzaga nella civiltà del Rinascimento
(Mantua: A. Mondadori, 1977), 291–351. For a list of sixteenth-century Jewish physicians
allowed to practice on Christian patients, see Luigi Carnevali, Il Ghetto di Mantova, con
appendice sui medici ebrei (Mantua: Mondovi, 1884). See also Roberto Navarrini, “Note
sui medici ebrei attivi in mantova nei secoli xv–xviii,” Postumia: annali del museo d’arte
moderna dell’Alto Mantovano 6 (1995): 64–9.
30
See Yosef Kaplan, “The Sephardim in North-Western Europe and the New World,” in
Haim Beinart, ed., Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Hebrew
University Press, 1992), 2:240–87, 246.
31
See Jonathan I. Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World
Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 36.
rescind progressive measures that had accreted earlier in the century.32

Under the leadership of Nicola Abiaso and Francesco Froza in 1555
and again in 1567, Jews were firmly excluded from Venice’s College of
Physicians.33 More than other Italian cities, Mantua promoted cordial
relations between its Catholic majority and its Jewish minority.
As Portaleone’s medical letters are firmly rooted in their geographic
setting, they are also products of their temporal context: the late six-
teenth century. The image of a Jewish scientist or antiquary with wide
intellectual interests who carried on extensive correspondence with gen-
tile associates is one we typically associate with ultra-alpine countries
and later centuries. For example, Emanuel Mendes da Costa was a Jew
who lived in eighteenth-century England. A clerk and fellow of the Royal
Society as well as a fellow of the Society of Antiquarians, he maintained
intellectual and social contact with some of the great scientific luminar-
ies of England and Europe, including clergymen.34 Even in the eighteenth
century, according to recent work by David Ruderman, da Costa’s posi-
tion was unique.35 Portaleone’s correspondence with more than forty
Christian physicians proves that sixteenth-century Italy, particularly
Mantua, provided a context in which Jews and Christians carried on
learned correspondence predicated on personal acquaintance.
In addition to scientific and antiquarian excurses, Portaleone’s medi-
cal letters demonstrate deep engagement with the natural history of the
biblical world. The Mantuan physician dedicated consultationes or por-
tions thereof to wild animals such as the monocerote, or unicorn, and
a certain kind of “holy wood” (legno santo) that acted as a panacea.36
32
Girolamo Dian, Alcuni ricordi della medicina al tempo della Repubblica veneta (Venice:
A. Pellizzato, 1909), 5.
33
N. E. Vanzan Marchini, “Medici ebrei e assistenza cristiana nella Venezia del ‘500,” La
Rassegna Mensile di Israel 45:4–5 (April–May 1979): 132–61, 151.
34
David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction
of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 205–6.
35
Ibid., 206.
36
On the monocerote, see David B. Ruderman, “Unicorns, Great Beasts, and the Marvelous
Variety of Things in Nature in the Thought of Abraham b. Hananiah Yagel,” in Isadore
Twersky and Bernard Septimus, eds., Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 343–64; Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic and Science:
University Press, 1988), 59–73. On holy wood, another name for guaiac, a wood imported
from the New World and believed to be a cure for morbus gallicus, or syphilis, see Siraisi,
History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning, 174.
Eleazar Gutwirth has shown that Amatus’s consilia are significant as

“models of certain cultural habits,” namely translation, textual study,
and polyglossia, and that one may read them to gain knowledge of their
author and his “general world.”37 The same may be said for Portaleone:
his consilia reveal his cultural habits, too. Portaleone quotes Hebrew
texts and addresses the relationship between religious authorities and
modern medical practitioners. The pages that follow analyze two sets
of letters: one concerning an antiquarian topic and the other an issue of
serious medical-philosophical import. Those letters underscore the affin-
ities between scientific research and religious study in Portaleone’s oeu-
vre. His Hebrew encyclopedia Shiltei HaGibborim, whose chapters on
incense I analyze in the following chapter, is a form of religious inquiry
supported by science. Many of Portaleone’s medical letters signal the
opposite trend: they show how university-trained Italian physicians sup-
plemented their understanding of scientific issues by studying religious
texts and traditions. They also indicate the applicability of canonical
Jewish texts such as the Talmud to cutting-edge scientific research at the
end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries.
Bread
On 25 January 1582, Portaleone responded to a letter that Giovanni
Battista Cavallara had sent him inquiring about bread.38 Unfortunately
Cavallara’s original letter has not survived, but Portaleone’s response has.
37
Eleazar Gutwirth, “Amatus Lusitanus and the Location of Sixteenth-Century Cultures,” in
David Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri, eds., Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in
Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 227, 217.
38
There is no reliable biographical survey of Cavallara. He was born in Mantua at an
unknown date and earned a medical degree from the University of Padua. For a time he
served as a physician to the Gonzaga family, in whose courts he likely met and worked with
Portaleone. Cavallara died in 1587. He published several Discorsi . . . sopra le compositioni
degli antidoti et medicamenti, che piu si costumano di dar per bocca (Mantua: Francesco
Osanna, 1586), as well as a treatise entitled De morbo epidemiali . . . discursus (Naples:
J. J. Carlinus, 1602). Cavallara also described Filippo Costa’s natural history collection in
Mantua: “Lettera dell’eccellentissimo Cavallara,” Discorsi di M. Filippo Costa (Mantua:
Francesco Osanna, 1586), sig. Ee. 3v et seq. Dario A. Franchini et al. published Cavallara’s
letter about giants’ bones in La scienza a corte: collezionismo eclettico natura e immagine a
Mantova fra rinascimento e manierismo (Rome: Bulzoni, 1979): 48–51. Cavallara may also
have treated the poet Torquato Tasso. See Pierantonio Serassi, La vita di Torquato Tasso
(Rome: Pagliarini, 1785), 386–7 and sources there.
The letter is titled “Discourse . . . on the number and nature of breads,
and what ‘aquatic’ and ‘lotus’ bread might mean.”39 Other Renaissance
physicians wrote at length about ancient grains and breads, normally
in connection with modern remedies. For example, Orazio Augenio, in
several letters to Giulio Picchino, attempted to identify the grains used
in a certain decoction mentioned by Hippocrates and other ancient
authors in order to prescribe them.40 By contrast, Girolamo Mercuriale
wrote a consilium about ancient breads without emphasizing their cura-
tive properties.41 Portaleone’s letter is after the fashion of Mercuriale
rather than Augenio; it is an antiquarian treatise with three clear goals:
to list as many ancient breads as possible and to identify lotus bread
and aquatic bread. None of these tasks was easy. Portaleone remarked
to Cavallara that “the differences between breads, most excellent sir, is
extremely great, owing to the diversity of grain, of cultivation, shape,
preparation, and cooking.”42 In fact, Portaleone went on to say, there are
probably no fewer types of breads than there are varieties of wine. And
lest he get overwhelmed with contemporary breads, Portaleone made it
clear to Cavallara that he wished to “leave aside the great diversity of
grains from which breads are made today – there is truly a considerable
number of them.”43
39
“Discursus Excellentissimi Patris de numero et differentia panum et quid sit panis lotus et
aquaticus ad instantiam Excellentissimi Cavallarae Medici Serenissimi D. Ducis Mantuae
etc.,” in Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 462r–464r.
40
Nancy G. Siraisi, Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the
Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 69; 140 n. 24. See Orazio
Augenio, Epistolarum et consultationum medicinalium prioris tomi libri XII (Venice:
apud Damianum Zenarium, 1602 [1592]), vol. 1, book 7, letters 2, 4–6, 8, fols. 76v–77r,
79v–82v.
41
quartus (Venice: apud Iuntas, 1604), consilium XX, 44–5. “Bernardino Castellano Medico,
Hieronymus Mercurialis. S. De quibusdam difficultatibus propositis.”
42
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 462r: “tante sono,
Illustrissimo e Eccellentissimo Signore, le differenze de i pani per la diversità de i grani,
dell’arteficio, figura, preparatione, miscellanea e cottura.” Mercuriale made similar remarks
in his letter to Bernardino Castellano. See Hieronymi Mercurialis Foroliviensis responso-
rum, et consultationum medicinalium tomus quartus (Venice: apud Iuntas, 1604), 44: “de
pano saligineo, et aliis copiose, ut ipse quoque asseveras scripserunt Athenaeus, Plinius,
atque Galenus noster, ita ut mirari non debeas, si inter eos, aliquam discrepantiam invenias,
quae facile potius oriri ob varietatem regionum et consuetudinis in faciendis panibus haud
secus atque tempestate nostra videmus apud diversos populos, diversi modi panes confici.”
43
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 462v: “lassando star da
parte diversi grani da quali hoggi di si costuma a farne pani – eccone qui un numero assai
Portaleone’s was a historical investigation; he had no interest

in analyzing contemporary bread-making techniques. Some of his
contemporaries did, and they acknowledged that even humble bakers
were often experts on grains, their provenance, and the best means to
convert grain to flour. Tomasso Garzoni, for example, noted that the art
of bread making required “no small intelligence.”44 Sixteenth-century
Italians considered baking to be a complicated art, one that demanded not
only technical competence but also agricultural insight. Still, Portaleone’s
investigation was antiquarian rather than practical. His chief concern, as
he put it to Cavallara, was to seek “the truth regarding what the ancients
said about many breads.”45 As I have already remarked, a desire to deter-
mine the “truth” about ancient items is a recurrent theme in many works
this book examines. David de’ Pomi, Ulisse Aldrovandi, and Andrea
Bacci all cast their antiquarian and natural philosophic labors as quests
to discover the truth about the biblical world.
Portaleone’s task was not an easy one. Numbers, for one thing, were
against him: in this letter alone Portaleone listed more than fifty kinds of
bread that were baked and eaten in ancient times, a list he had assembled
in the course of his energetic reading of classical literature. Portaleone
focused on two terms: lotus and aquatic bread. The Mantuan physi-
cian explained to Cavallara that he needed to “differentiate the lotus
bread of the doctors” from “Pliny’s aquatic bread.”46 Those differences
fell into three categories: their faculties, the manner in which they were
made, and the accidents they followed.47 As we saw in Chapter 2, impre-
cise terminology in Pliny’s Natural History spurred Ulisse Aldrovandi
and Melchior Guilandinus to offer new interpretations of Pliny’s work
notabile.” Though this volume has a Latin title and a Latin index, many of the letters, like
this one, are written in Italian with frequent, and occasionally lengthy, Latin quotations.
44
See Garzoni’s chapter “De’ fornari, o panatieri, e confertinari e zambellari e offelari e cial-
donari,” in his Piazza Universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, ed. Paolo Cherchi and
Beatrice Collina (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 2:1352–5.
45
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 462v: “e che sia il vero che
gli Pani delli quali gli authori vechi parlano molti siano.”
46
Mercuriale, in his letter to Castellano, also discusses lotus bread and mentions many of the
same ancient and medieval authorities. See Hieronymi Mercurialis Foroliviensis responso-
rum, et consultationum medicinalium tomus quartus (Venice: apud Iuntas, 1604), 45.
47
“Faculties,” or facultà in Portaleone’s letter – see pages 462v and 463r – refers to the formal
properties of something. Aristotle explains the concept of faculties [dunamis] with regard to
nutrition in De Anima ii 4, 415b27–416a22; 416b20–23; and also in his De generatione et
corruptione i 5.
by incorporating Hebrew scientific vocabulary into their investigations.

Portaleone’s exploration of ancient breads led him to do the same: his
quest to understand Pliny stimulated him to seek confirmation of his
ideas not only in scientific texts but also in Jewish works such as the
Talmud. One reason the Talmud could help Portaleone identify and
understand these breads was that Pesah￷im, its tractate concerning the
laws of Passover, differentiated various types of bread. It did so in order
to ascertain which could be consumed during the festival and which
could discharge certain ritual obligations during the Passover seder.
Neither lotus bread nor pane buffetto was baked; they were scalded
or boiled in water. As such, these foodstuffs occupied a liminal posi-
tion between bread as traditionally understood and other grain-based
comestibles.
In his efforts to identify these food products, Portaleone first combed
through ancient writings for mentions of lotus and aquatic bread, as
any university-educated natural philosopher would have done. He cited
passages of varying relevance from ancient and medieval Greek, Roman,
and Arab physicians, such as Galen, Avicenna, Oribasius, Aetius, Paul
of Aegina, and Celsus, regarding the medical uses of those two breads.48
But none of those authorities really helped Portaleone grasp the “truth”
about those breads. From Galen, Portaleone learned that patients sick
with fever will experience relief from ingesting pearl barley gruel, broth
made from wheat, and certain kinds of soft bread.49 He also ascer-
tained that patients recovering from illness require something soft in
their stomach – they should eat barley broth, a juice extracted from
horehound, or lotus bread.50 Panis lotus, according to Portaleone’s
48
Portaleone read Greek but knew no Arabic. Avicenna’s medical writings were available in
Latin in numerous editions throughout the sixteenth century. See Nancy G. Siraisi, Avicenna
in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
49
See “Galeni methodi medendi, id est de morbis curandis liber decimus Thoma Linacro
Anglo interprete,” in Galeni septima classis artem morborum curatricem describit (Florence:
Giunta, 1541): “oportet autem quamprimum ptisanae cremore, et sorbitione ex alica nutri-
tum, paneque post oblato, aquae frigidae potione hominem cures; quippe protinus extingui-
tur ac cessat omnino febris” (64v).
50
See Galeni omnia quae extant opera (12 vols.), vol. 6: Galeni librorum quinta classis
(Venice: Giunta, 1565), book II, chap. 13, “De lacte,” 12v: “Contemplator enim utrumque
in exemplis propositis videlicet, exempli causa, duobus hominibus, quibus similiter os
ventris mordicetur, et qui pariter aut succum ptisanae aut chondrum aut panem lotum
reading of Galen, is soft and easily digested. From Avicenna, Portaleone

learned that the nutritional value of bread that is soaked in water is
high – even though some of its nutrients are blocked from nourish-
ing the body.51 Oribasius taught Portaleone that for robust people the
more fermentation bread undergoes the healthier it is.52 Aetius sup-
plied Portaleone with a long list of ancient breads, which he drew
upon in his letter to Cavallara, and informed him that porridge-like
breads (those that bathe in water for too long) are devoid of nutritional
value.53 Paul of Aegina slighted lotus bread and claimed that it “nour-
ishes very little.”54 The Roman physician Celsus anticipated Aetius and
disapproved of bread soaked in water, which he considered “among
sumpserint, deinde alteri mordicationem restinctam, alteri vero inauctam ponito. Obsecro,
nunquid succus ptisanae aut chondrus aut panis ex se mordax est, per accidens autem
in altero hominum morsum non modo non inauxit, sed mitigavit, an quod ex se quidem
erat mitigavit, per accidens vero in altero irritavit? Ego sane ex sua natura epicerasticum
esse dico succum ptisanae et chondrum et panem et, per Iovem, lac quoque caeterum in
altero homine morsum auxisse . . . ex quo patet, per suam quidem naturam boni esse succi,
verum interdum una cum iis succis, qui mordicationes excitant, corrumpi et ipsum augere
symptoma.”
51
See Avicennae principis et philosophi sapientissimi libri in re medica omnes qui hactenus ad
nos pervenere: Id est libri canonis quinque, De viribus cordis, De removendis nocumentis in
regimine sanitatis, De sirupo acetoso, et Cantica. Omnia novissime post aliorum omnium
operam a Ioanne Paulo Mongio Hydruntino et Ioanne Costaeo Laudensi recognita (Venice:
Vicentium Valgrisium, 1564), chap. 573, p. 365. “Panis quid est? Oportet ut sit panis mun-
dus, salitus, massam habens confectam, fermentatus, coctus bene in tanor ultimae una nocte
permanens . . . et panis quidem furni non est sicut panis altanor si suscipiet decoctionem ab
utroque latere . . . modus vero ablutionis eius est ut sumatur medulla panis qui iacuit una
nocte et infundatur in aqua calida, deinde effundatur ab eo aqua quae super ipsum natat,
et renovetur super ipsum aqua, donec ab eo removeatur virtus fermenti, et reliquorum, et
consequantur finem suae inflationis . . . et ille qui non decoquitur bene est plurimi nutrimenti
et similiter parum habens fermenti, sed eius nutrimentum oppilat, nisi illos qui sunt plurimi
exercitii et panis de patella est huius generis, eius nanque pars interior raro decoquitur bene.
Et panis quidem ablutus parvi est nutrimenti elongatus a similagineo levis digestionis et
ponderis. Et panis frumenti rari, in iudicio existit opiri.” By panis altanor Avicenna means a
bread that is boiled “from both sides.” See ibid., 365 n. f: “cui advenit decoctio ex utroque
latere.”
52
See Oribasii medicinalium collectorum ad imperatorem Iulianum Caes. Aug. liber primus,
book 1, chap. 8: “De panibus triticeis,” in Medicae artis principes post Hippocratem et
Galenum, 2 vols. (Paris: Stephanus, 1567), 1:209.
53
See Aetii medici graeci contractae medicinae, tetrabibli primae, sermo secundus, chap. 251,
“quae parum nutriunt,” in Medicae artis principes 2:106: “porrum, crudum quidem nullum
penitus alimentum praebet, bis vero aut ter coctum, paucissimum.”
54
See Pauli Aeginetae de re medica liber I, book 1, chap. 78: “De frumentaceis,” in Medicae
artis principes, 1:369–70: “amylum parum nutrit, velut etiam panis lotus” (miscited by
Portaleone as chapter 28).
the weakest of food.”55 In short, the physicians who wrote about the
medical and nutritional properties of lotus bread and aquatic bread
barely differentiated between them. Portaleone did, and made this dif-
ference the focus of his exchange with Cavallara.
Portaleone, unlike his medical predecessors whom he quoted, did not
shy away from defining lotus bread. He stated that it was made from
dough that is scalded in boiling water and then cooked.56 The immer-
sion in water penetrates not only the surface but also the interior of
the dough, which becomes spongy and aerated.57 Portaleone’s identifi-
cation of lotus bread derived only in small measure from what he read
in classical and medieval medical texts; observing bakers at work, or
perhaps even baking the bread himself, helped even more. Given his
tendency to assemble antiquarian products from descriptions in clas-
sical literature, he may well have tried to bake this particular type of
bread.58 But Portaleone could only make an educated guess, as he did
when he wrote to Cavallara, that “this, according to my opinion, might
be lotus bread.”59 Still, more than classical literature, ancient medicine,
or discussions with Mantuan bakers and mill operators, Portaleone’s
own Jewish tradition helped him identify lotus bread and understand
its properties. The final source to which Portaleone turned for informa-
tion regarding this spongy bread was an unlikely one in the context of a
learned exchange about ancient bread: the Talmud.
Portaleone explained to Cavallara that “I am given to believe that this
agrees with what our sages say in the book of Passover Rites [Pesah￷im]
in the second chapter and its commentaries on Padh Chaluta: it is bread
55
See Aurelii Cornelii Celsi de re medica libri octo, book 2, chap. 18: “qui cibi, potionesve,
aut valentis, aut mediae, aut imbecillae materiae sint,” in Medicae artis principes 2:37–8, 38:
“aqua quoque madens panis imbecillissimis annumerari potest” (miscited by Portaleone as
chapter 19).
56
“Cooked,” or cotto, is not a verb typically associated with bread making. The process
Portaleone describes indicates that pane lotus resembled a dumpling or a form of fried
dough rather than bread.
57
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 463r–v: “Ma il pane loto
sarà il pan crudo brovato e poscia cotto, che per haver havuto in pasta quella gionta di aqua
che non solo bagna la superficie, ma anco entra nella midolla, diviene spungoso e aereo.”
58
In the following chapter I explore Portaleone’s reconstruction of ancient Israelite incense
based on ingredients listed in the Bible and the Talmud.
59
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 463v: “questo dunque a
mio giudicio sara il Pane loto.”
dipped and scalded in water.”60 In the Talmudic tractate Pesah￷im there is

a discussion about the meaning of the biblical expression “bread of afflic-
tion.” The phrase is prominently placed in the Passover Haggadah in a
section where Jews are enjoined to eat unleavened bread on the first night
of the festival and commanded to recite the Aramaic declaration concern-
ing the “bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.”61
Since Talmudic law stipulates that the maz￱ah consumed on Passover must
resemble the “bread of affliction,” subsequent discussions elucidate what
is meant by that expression. In the Talmud, the category “bread of afflic-
tion” excludes h￵alut – the very type of bread to which Portaleone compared
lotus bread.62 Several medieval commentators to whom Portaleone likely
had access clarify the Talmud’s language and describe h￵alut. The eleventh-
century French scholar Rashi explains that it is “bread that is boiled in hot
water after it is baked.”63 A later glossator, the tosafist Rabbenu Tam, states
that h￵alut refers to bread cooked and not baked at all.64 In sum, medie-
val commentators stress that while h￵alut is a type of bread, it may not
substitute for “bread of affliction.” The tosafist glossators of the twelfth
century left little room for doubt when they pronounced h￵alut “bread, but
not the bread of affliction.”65 The Talmudic text and its medieval glossa-
tors helped Portaleone visualize a foodstuff that was scalded rather than
baked, thereby aiding him in his effort to define lotus bread.
But the Talmud did more for Portaleone than inform him about bread
making; he could have come upon that knowledge by reading any num-
ber of Latin or Italian texts or by speaking to a baker.66 Shortly after the
60
Ibid., 463v: “mi dò a credere che conviene con quello che gli nostri savii nel libro de i Riti
Pasquali al secondo capitolo e al comento dell’Aphorismo secondo Padh Chaluta chiamano,
cioè pane sbrufato et brovato nell’aqua.” Portaleone’s transliteration of ‫ פת חלוטה‬as “padh
chaluta” is typical of Italian Jews’ tendency to transliterate the Hebrew letter ‫ ת‬as “dh.”
Twenty-first-century readers would transliterate ‫ פת חלוטה‬as “pat h￷aluta.”
61
Passover Haggadah, ‫הא לחמא עניא די אכלו אבהתנא בארעא דמצרים‬
62
BT Pesah￷im 36b: ‫“( תנו רבנן לחם עני פרט לחלוט ולאשישה‬our rabbis taught that ‘bread of afflic-
tion’ excludes pudding and pan-cake”). My translations of ‫ חלוט‬and ‫ אשישיה‬follow Marcus
Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic
Literature (London: Trübner, 1903), 128.
63
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzh￷aki, d. 1105, commentary on BT Pesah￷im 36v, s.v. ‫ לחם שלאחר אפיה‬:‫חלוט‬
‫חמים‬ ‫חזר ונתבשל במים‬
64
See the comments of Rabbi Jacob b. Meir Tam (d. 1171) in Sefer HaYashar le-rabbenu Tam
(Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1985), sec. 47.
65
See Tosafot to BT Pesah￷im 36b, s.v. ‫לחלוט‬ ‫פרט‬
66
See Marilyn Nicoud, Les régimes de santé au Moyen Age: naissance et diffusion d’une écri-
ture médicale, XIIIe–XVe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007); Ken Albala, Eating
analysis of “bread of affliction,” the Talmud defined pat h￵aluta in more

precise language. In a discussion of breads that are exempt from h￵allah –
the commandment to remove a portion of dough prior to baking – h￵alut
is understood to be an alimentary product made by pouring boiling
water over flour.67 H￺alut, according to the ancient rabbis, did not count
as bread at all, since it did not need to be tithed. For Portaleone, lotus
bread corresponded to the Talmud’s pat h￵aluta. Both were either fried or
scalded and were made with generous amounts of water. To understand
a mysterious bread from classical literature, Portaleone borrowed a cor-
responding identity, and a detailed description, from Talmudic literature.
Regarding the second bread, the aquatic variety, Portaleone under-
stood it to be a foodstuff with which he was familiar in his daily life.
His mission was to understand one of Pliny’s cryptic remarks, and his
method was to privilege his own experience over his formidable erudi-
tion. Portaleone reflected that,
as for Pliny’s pane aquatico, he said “recently we had a bread introduced

from Parthia, known as water bread, from a method of kneading, whereby
the dough is drawn out by the aid of water, a process that renders it remark-
ably light, spongy, and full of holes. Some call this Parthian bread.” I am
sure that this is our pane buffetto. It corresponds in the stated conditions
of its production as well as in its substance.68
Most likely, when Portaleone wrote “our bread,” he meant a product

from Mantua or its environs; in the Renaissance, Italian cuisine varied
enormously from region to region, even from town to town.69 Using a
bread he might have found in a local bakery to clarify an enigmatic term
Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Maria Paleari
Henssler, Bibliografia latino-italiana di gastronomia, 2 vols. (Milan: Chimera, 1998).
67
BT Pesah￷im 37b: ‫( המעיסה קמח שעל גבי מוגלשין החליטה מוגלשין שעל גבי קמח‬meisah is [made by
placing] flour upon scalding water; halita is [made by pouring] scalding water over flour).
This distinction is clarified in Entsiklopedya Talmudit (Jerusalem: Mosad HaRav Kuk,
1947–), vol. 15, col. 535.
68
Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 463v: “Quanto poi al pane aquatico di
Plinio quando disse: ‘non pridem etiam e Parthis invecto, quem aquaticum vocant, quoniam
aqua trahitur ad tenuem et spungiosam inanitatem, alii Parthicum,’ tengo certo che sia il
nostro pane buffetto, in cui mi pare che concurrano le condittioni detti tanto nel modo di
farlo, quanto nella riuscita della sostanza.” For the Pliny quotation, see Natural History
18:43.
69
See Franco Banchi, Il pranzo di S. Giovanni: racconti da tavola del Rinascimento fi orentino
(Florence: LoGisma, 1997); Phillippe Gillet, Par mets et par vins: voyages et gastronomie en
in classical literature was a bold act, and Portaleone knew it. To pro-
tect his scholarly integrity, he confessed, “If it seems [to you] that I have
erred in this matter, I would prefer to avoid your illustrious presence,
and great embarrassment. In my place I boldly send this letter; after all,
it cannot blush as I would.”70 Portaleone was not entirely confident in
his analysis of these two types of bread. To define the aquatic bread that
Pliny only vaguely described, Portaleone relied on his empirical knowl-
edge of local, Mantuan cuisine. To understand lotus bread, a comestible
that was harder to identify, Portaleone relied not on Latin or vernacular
texts but on the Talmud. The fact that he did so provides an important
example of how scientific and antiquarian culture of sixteenth-century
Italy was capacious enough to assimilate all manner of unusual sources,
including a foundational text of Judaism whose possession or study was
officially proscribed to both Jews and Christians.71
In Portaleone’s correspondence with non-Jewish physicians and
naturalists, the Talmud adjudicated in a number of scientific and phil-
osophical disputes. Some were antiquarian. Talmudic literature pro-
vided descriptions and listed characteristics of obscure breads that aided
Portaleone’s effort to distinguish between various ancient bread prod-
ucts. Occasionally classical Jewish texts served Portaleone and his read-
ers in a more nuanced capacity. The Talmud weighed in on live, pressing
philosophical and medical debates. In Portaleone’s correspondence with
Alessandro Magno about a monstrous birth, for example, Talmudic pas-
sages confirmed several of modern science’s contentious findings and
lent those findings an aura of spiritual credibility.
Europe (16e–18e siècles) (Paris: Payot, 1985); Luigi Firpo, ed., Gastronomia del Rinascimento
(Turin: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 1974); Jean-Claude Margolin and Robert
Sauzet, eds., Pratiques et discours alimentaires à la Renaissance. Actes du colloque de Tours
de mars 1979 (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1982); Marie Viallon-Schoneveld, ed.,
Le boire et le manger au XVIe siècle. Actes du XIe colloque du Puy-en-Velay (Saint-Étienne:
Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2004).
70
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber 463v: “se in tutto quello che
ho detto in questa materia ad alcuno paresse che io errassi, mi giovarà di non essere alla pre-
senza di Vostra Eccellenza per non haver tanta vergogna, e venga in luogo mio questa lettera
sfacciatamente, chè ad ogni modo non può, per quel ch’io me ne creda, arossire in faccia.”
71
On continuing Jewish study of the Talmud in Italy even after the burnings of 1553 and 1559,
see Amon Raz-Krakotzkin, “On Burning and Printing, the Press and Culture” (Hebrew),
unpublished typescript, pp. 5, 7. I would like to thank Professor Krakotzkin for sharing this
typescript with me. The best survey of Italian Jews’ reaction to the burning of the Talmud
is Abraham Yaari’s “The Burning of the Talmud in Italy,” in his Meh￵karei sefer: perakim
be-toldot ha-sefer ha-‘ivri (Jerusalem: Mosad Ha-Rav Kuk, 1958), 198–234.
Monsters
On 28 January 1594, a certain Alessandro Magno wrote to Abraham
Portaleone to tell him he had witnessed the birth of a monster. Magno,
whose letter was sent to Portaleone from Luzzara, a small city in Emilia
not far from Mantua, has left no known works to posterity. Standard
biographical and medical reference texts do not mention him. Nor do the
rotuli, or matriculation records, from the University of Bologna, Emilia’s
only medical school in this period, mention his name.72 Still, Magno’s
inclusion on the list of Portaleone’s correspondents, doubtless designed by
Portaleone’s son David to highlight his father’s high professional status,
creates the impression that Magno was a respected medical practitioner
in his time – or, at the very least, that Portaleone wished him to be.73 Even
though Alessandro Magno’s name is not well known to the history of
Renaissance medicine, variations of it turn up in early modern sources.
For example, Leonardo Fioravanti’s 1582 collection of medical writings,
Il tesoro della vita humana, includes a letter Fioravanti wrote in October
1568 to a certain “Alessandro Magnese Piacentino” on the topic of tertian
fever.74 This physician from Piacenza may have been the same person with
whom Portaleone corresponded. And there is further evidence that the sur-
name Magno or its Latin equivalent may have belonged to a family from
Emilia with strong medical qualifications: records kept by the University
of Bologna note that Alexander de Magnis lectured on medical topics on
the arts faculty from 1645 until 1650.75 This Alexander de Magnis may
have been a descendant or relative of Portaleone’s correspondent.
Portaleone and Magno appear to have had a close professional rela-
tionship. Magno’s letter that describes the monstrous birth is signed
72
See Umberto Dallari, I rotuli dei lettori legisti e artisti dello studio bolognese dal 1384 al
1799, 4 vols. (Bologna: Regia tipografia dei Fratelli Merlani, 1888–1924).
73
Other well-known correspondents featured in Portaleone’s consilia include Hieronymus
Fabricius de Aquapendente, Girolamo Mercuriale, Marcello Donato, and Scipio Cassola.
74
Leonardo Fioravanti, Il tesoro della vita humana dell’eccellentissimo dottore et cavaliere
M. Leonardo Fioravanti Bolognese (Venice: Melchior Sessa, 1582), book 3, chap. 5:
224v–225v. “Al Magnifico Messer Alessandro Magnese Piacentino: dove si discorre sopra
una sua infermità di febre terzana.”
75
In the 1645–6 academic year, as well as the following one, de Magnis lectured on logic
during the first hour of morning classes; in the academic year 1648–9 he taught physics; and
in 1649–50 he lectured on theoretical medicine. See Dallari, I rotuli dei lettori legisti e artisti
dello studio Bolognese dal 1384 al 1799, 2:148–52.
“from [your] most affectionate servant,”76 and Portaleone’s response,

dated 10 February 1594, praises Magno for his letter that was “not
only filled but overflowing with medical and philosophical perspicu-
ity.”77 There is evidence beyond this single exchange that Magno and
Portaleone were close colleagues. In a letter written in 1604, Magno
extolled Portaleone’s humanitas and alluded to their many conver-
sations and letters throughout the years, especially on gynecological
matters.78 Portaleone’s elaborate relationship with Magno magnified
Portaleone’s legacy in his readers’ eyes and, just as important, provided
Portaleone an opportunity to explore the connections between science,
tradition, and faith – a topic that engaged him during the final portion
of his life.79
In his letter of 28 January, Magno devoted the most space and detail
to the birth of a deformed infant; in turn, that case was the most inter-
esting to Portaleone. In Italian laced with Latin quotations and allusions,
Magno explained to Portaleone that
a monster was born here on the seventeenth of this month, sick with many
afflictions, since it was missing its neck and its entire brain. It was born
dead and my opinion is that it could not have been born alive. Therefore
I said that it could never have lived as an animal in the womb, because
“that which cannot live outside the womb does not have animal life in the
womb, [and] a fetus without a brain cannot live outside the womb.” The
first issue is proved because “if it [the fetus] cannot live outside, the cause
of life within [the uterus] is through continuity of ligaments, which make
it live the life of a plant, as in the case of a mola.” The second matter seems
clear to me, since “no one can live without the animal spirit that enters
through the brain” if it lacks a medulla [brainstem]. You cannot say [it is
76
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 199r, “servitore affetiona-
tissimo.” On the topic of informality in medical letters, see Candice Delisle, “The Letter:
Private Text or Public Place? The Mattioli-Gesner Controversy about the aconitum pri-
mum,” Gesnerus 61 (2004): 161–76.
77
Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 199v: “Solutiones ad quaesita propo-
sita ab Excellentissimo Domino Alexandro Magno et sunt Excellentissimi Patris.”
78
Ibid., 33r–33v: “Epistola Excellentissimi Doctoris Alexandri Magni ad Excellentissimum
Patrem, in qua nonnulla continentur dubia circa quaedam Hippocratis verba in libro de
septimestri et octimestri partu.”
79
See Portaleone, SG, as well as Alessandro Guetta’s discussion of its introduction in his
“Avraham Portaleone, le scientifique repenti,” in Gad Freudenthal, Jean-Pierre Rothschild,
and Gilbert Dahan, eds., Torah et science: perspectives historiques et théoriques. Études
offertes à Charles Touati (Louvain: Peeters, 2001), 213–27.
alive] because “everything flows in through the brain, and this is lacking in
proportions that have to do with the spirit.”80
Though Magno never poses a well-defined question to Portaleone, the

implications of this case are clear. Magno wishes to know, first of all, if
the fetus may have been viable after birth. Closely related to this, Magno
is curious about how the fetus was nourished in the womb and how it
received its vital spirit.81
Religious concerns inspired Magno’s questions and shaped Portaleone’s
answers.82 Magno wished to know when the spiritual soul enters the human
body in order to determine whether or not the fetus was fit for baptism.
Exploring related issues, Portaleone drew on Talmudic discussions of neo-
natal viability. Magno, weighing practical concerns, called upon classical
philosophical and medical literature to shed light on the status of the new-
born infant. Portaleone leavened his response with material drawn from
his own tradition’s canonical texts. In fact, exploring Magno’s case study
presented an excuse for Portaleone to demonstrate his religious erudition
and establish that texts associated with a religious tradition are at least as
instructive as modern scientific ones, if not more so.
Magno and Baptism

Although Magno never explicitly states the reason for his interest in this
case, it is probable that religious ritual was on his mind. One of the first
things a Christian physician must have considered in the late sixteenth
80
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 199r–199v: “il secondo
infermo è stato un monstro nato qui alli 17 di questo mese, infermo di morbo in numero,
perchè gli mancava il collo et tutto il cervello. Naque, morto, nè vivo, secondo il mio parere,
poteva nascere, perciò dissi ch’ mai non visse come animale nel ventre, perchè ‘quod non
potest vivere extra uterum, non vivit vita animali in utero etc.,’ ‘foetus sine cerebro non
potest vivere extra questo.’ La prima si prova, perchè ‘si non potest vivere extra, causa vitae
intus est, tamen continuatio ligamentorum, quae facit ipsum vivere vita plantae quemadmo-
dum mola.’ La seconda mi par chiara, perchè ‘nullus potest vivere sine spiritu animali, qui a
cerebro influit,’ se pur la medulla non supplisse, il che non si può dire perchè ‘omnia habet
a cerebro influente etc. et caret proportionibus quae pertinet ad spiritum.’”
81
For more on Renaissance embryology and theories of the soul, see Katharine Park, “The
Organic Soul,” in Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner, eds., The Cambridge History of
Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 464–84, 469.
82
James J. Bono and others have studied how, in sixteenth-century medical writings,
the meaning of spiritus enlarged to encompass Christian notions of the soul as well as
Aristotelian ones. See Bono, “The Languages of Life: Jean Fernel (1497–1558) and Spiritus
in Pre-Harveian Bio-medical Thought” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1981), 58 and 237.
century – a time of high infant mortality and frequent contagion – was

whether or not to baptize a newborn.83 The doctor-clergyman Karl
Franz Nicholaus Capellman, writing in the late nineteenth century,
noted the importance of baptism as an issue that confronted physicians
who attend monstrous births and remarked that a child was fit for bap-
tism only if it possessed a head and a chest.84 Well before Capellman’s
time, Catholic theologians and doctors debated baptism in the context
of unusual births. Those debates illuminate the issues Magno and his
peers may have considered and underscore the conspicuous relevance of
religious ritual to medical life.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Sicilian theologian
Francesco Emanuello Cangiamila wrote an entire book about the souls
of fetuses and the obligation that priests have – in the absence of doc-
tors – to deliver babies and baptize them, and even to perform emergency
cesarean sections if necessary.85 Cangiamila offered an elastic definition
of one’s capacity for baptism and proposed that even those fetuses with
limited chances for viability undergo the procedure. The criteria for neo-
natal viability were likely more flexible in Magno’s mind than they were
for Capellman some three hundred years later. In late sixteenth-century
Italy, baptism was fiercely debated, and those debates colored Magno’s
reaction to the monstrous birth he witnessed in Luzzara.
At midcentury, the Council of Trent’s decrees were unambiguous
in their insistence that infant baptism was an essential sacrament and
unbending in their assertion that whichever individuals or groups denied
this, such as Waldenses and Cathari, were heretics.86 Baptism was a live
issue at this time not only because of Tridentine deliberations but because
of the emerging Protestant practices, mostly in German-speaking areas
83
Daniel Schäfer, Geburt aus dem Tod: der Kaiserschnitt an Verstorbenen in der abendländi-
schen Kultur (Hürtgenwald: Guido Pressler, 1999), 55–71.
84
Karl Franz Nicholaus Capellman, Pastoralmedizin (Paderborn: Bonifacius Druckerei,
1920), 129.
85
Francesco Emanuello Cangiamila, Embriologia sacra, ovvero dell’uffizio de’ sacerdoti,
medici, e superiori, circa l’eterna saluta de’ bambini racchiusi nell’utero, libri quattro (Milan:
Giuseppe Cairoli, 1751).
86
See Universum sacrosanctum concilium tridentinum oecumenicum, ac generale, legitime
tum indictum tum congregatum (Brescia: Iohannes Baptista Bozola, 1563), 34v, session VII,
3 March 1547, De baptismo, especially canons xiii–xiv. The canons do not stipulate these
two sects, although they are the most conspicuous rejectors of the baptismal sacrament.
A. W. Bates makes a similar point in his Emblematic Monsters: Unnatural Conceptions and
Deformed Births in Early Modern Europe (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 144.
north of the Alps, that challenged Catholic tradition. Anabaptists, for

example, rejected infant baptism on the grounds that such a crucial reli-
gious practice requires adult consent.87
Baptizing healthy infants was complicated enough, but whether or
not to baptize developmentally disabled newborns was an even stick-
ier subject. It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that a
Catholic theologian was to offer a clear ruling on this question. Pope
Benedict XIV (pope from 1740 until 1758), in his De synodo dioec-
esana, urged midwives to baptize endangered fetuses while still in the
womb, if they could reach the fetus with the aid of an instrument.88
Even so, Benedict differentiated between absolute baptisms, where the
midwife could reach the fetus’s head, and conditional baptisms, where
the midwife could access only another part of the body.89 As Cangiamila
observes in Embriologia sacra, common people believe that male fetuses
do not possess souls until forty days after conception, and that female
fetuses lack them until eighty or ninety days after conception. As such,
abortion was often justified during the first month or two of pregnancy
on the grounds that fetuses in the first trimester of pregnancy lacked
human souls. Among the arguments Cangiamila marshals against this
popular belief is the rabbinic legend that people’s souls were created
long before their bodies, so that all Jews were able to hear God’s revela-
tion on Mount Sinai.90
Early modern Catholic thinkers had much to say about baptizing
monsters. The rituale romanum, standardized by Pope Paul V around
1614, was explicit on the matter, saying that, “with regard to monsters,
87
See Winfried Glade, Die Taufe in den vorcanisianischen katholishen Katechismen des 16.
Jahrhunderts im deutschen Sprachgebeit (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1979); Hughes Oliphant
Old, The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the Sixteenth Century (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 1992); and Karen E. Spierling, Infant Baptism in Reformation Geneva: The
Shaping of a Community, 1536–1564 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
88
Benedict XIV (Prospero Lambertini), De synodo dioecesana libri tredecim, 2 vols. (Ferrara:
Giovanni Manfrè, 1756), 1:304, book 7, chap. 5.
89
Ibid., 307.
90
Cangiamila, Embriologia sacra, 20: “Molti de’ Rabbini favoleggiarono, tutte le Anime degli
Uomini essere create assai prima de’ Corpi, e che tute si ritrovarono nel Monte Sinai per
udire la promulgazione della Legge, senza la quale promulgazione non sarebbero ora tenute
all’osservanza de’ Precetti.” The belief in ensoulment at forty days for male fetuses and at
eighty days for female fetuses has a long history that was as learned as it was popular. See
E. Amann, E. Mangenot, and A. Vacant, eds., Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 15 vols.
(Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1903–50), s.v. “animation,” 1:1305–20, esp. 1306–11.
they should certainly be baptized.” However, there was a proviso: “If the
monster itself is not considered to be human, it ought not to be baptized,
or, if there is doubt, baptized under this condition: ‘If thou art a Man,
I baptize thee.’”91 The precise meaning of the phrase “if the monster
itself is not considered to be human” was open to debate. Cangiamila
summarizes a considerable body of seventeenth-century scholarship
attentive to the issue of precisely which deformed infants merited bap-
tism. Massimiliano Dezza, in his Rituale di Paolo V, argued that if the
infant is able to move it must be baptized. Girolamo Fiorentini of Lucca
(1602–78) went even further in his De hominibus dubiis, sive de bap-
tismo abortivorum, suggesting that the fetus does not even need to dis-
play movement; it merely needs “the instruments” of motion, which are
“arms, thighs, and calfs.”92 During the middle of the seventeenth century,
when Dezza, Fiorentini, and others wrote, Catholic theologians system-
atically expanded the definition of which infants are capable of under-
going baptism. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Cangiamila was
confident enough about the importance of baptism to say about a mon-
strous infant that “if you are not certain, and it might be a beast, baptize
sub conditione.”93 Magno’s concern about whether or not to baptize the
infant echoed debates in early modern Catholic theology.
Still, baptism was not merely a practical concern for a Christian phy-
sician of Portaleone’s time such as Magno; it was a matter of faith.
Various legends pertinent to the topic existed: some described mon-
strous fetuses who were miraculously rehabilitated and subsequently
went on to illustrious careers in the church. Cangiamila reports a well-
known one about Saint Elzeario of Ariano (d. 1323), clearly designed to
warn young mothers about the foolhardiness of abortion.94 According
to the story, Anfisibia, the wife of Grimaldo, gave birth to a fright-
ful monster that lacked human form. Saint Elzeario subsequently
91
Rituale romanum Pauli V Pontificis maximi jussu editum, et a Benedicto XIV auctum et
castigatum cum cantu emendato (Mechelen: P. J. Hanicq, 1854), 11: “In monstris vero bap-
tizandis, si casus eveniat, magna cautio adhibenda est, de quo, si opus fuerit, Ordinarius
loci, vel alii periti consulantur, nisi mortis periculum immineat. Monstrum, quod humanam
speciem non prae se ferat, baptizari non debet, de quo si dubium fuerit, baptizetur sub hac
conditione: ‘si tu es homo, ego te baptizo.’”
92
All quoted by Cangiamila, Embriologia sacra, 52–3.
93
Ibid., 92: “quando non è certo, che sia di Bruto, battezzarsi sotto condizione.”
94
On Saint Elzeario, see Jacques Campbell, Vie occitanes de saint Auzias et de sainte Dauphine
(Rome: Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum, 1963).
appeared, prostrated himself, and prayed and cried with such fervor
that the shapeless pile of flesh was transformed into an angelic infant.
Not content with his accomplishment, the saint prophesied that the
baby would one day become pope, and indeed the baby grew up to
be Pope Urban V. Appropriately, Cangiamila’s only addendum to this
story is “it must be said that the aforementioned pile of flesh had some
human characteristics, however imperfect, at least internally, so that it
could receive a rational soul.”95 The anecdote proves, to the credulous
reader at least, that monstrous infants may not only be viable but can
grow up to be saints or even popes. Versions of this legend or simi-
lar ones may have circulated during Portaleone and Magno’s time. At
the very least, the pervasiveness of stories like this one establishes that
baptizing “monsters” was not merely a juridical concern but also fod-
der for moral fables that demonstrated the power of faith to transform
monsters into men.
Portaleone and Jewish concerns

Christian physicians like Magno had a clear problem to confront
when faced with abnormal births. Jews such as Portaleone did as
well. Whether or not to circumcise a child was the most pressing
concern on the minds of Jewish thinkers in the early modern period.
Although Portaleone does not directly address the issue, several of his
contemporaries did. From their surviving letters and legal opinions,
which likely represent only a few of the original discussions of this
matter, we learn how rabbis and doctors alike had a stake in the assess-
ment of newborn monsters.
95
Cangiamila, Embriologia sacra, 92–3: “Anfisibia moglie di Grimaldo della prima nobiltà di
Provenza, e Signore di Grisato, dopo atrocissimi dolori partorì uno spaventoso mostro, cioè
una massa di carne, che col suo continuo moto apportava orrore a chiunque la mirava. Non
pareva Uomo, perchè non aveva figura umana, e non sembrava neppure una bestia, perchè
non aveva sembianza di Bruto, e non aveva in somma alcuna effigie. S. Elzeario Parente de’
Genitori, e che si ritrovava presente, mosso dalle lagrime di quelli, inginocchiossi: ed orando
con gran fervore, cambiò prodigiosamente quella massa di carne in un Puttino di rara bel-
lezza, a cui vagiti accorsero tutti d’un subito per ammirare il portento divino. Profetizzò
ancora il Santo, che questo Bambino sarebbe un giorno Sommo Pontefice, e lo fu di celebre
memoria sotto nome di Urbano V. Bisogna dire, che la detta massa di carne aveva qual-
che configurazione umana, quantunque imperfetta, almeno interna, bastante ad accogliere
Anima ragionevole.”
Circumcision of deformed infants was perhaps early modern rabbis’

chief consideration in the event of a monstrous birth.96 When Siamese
twins were born in the Venetian ghetto in the spring of 1575, at least
one rabbi took up his pen to address the topic. Abraham Carmi of
Cremona wrote to his teacher David Samuel Pescarolo of Vercelli that
same year and told him about a bizarre birth; his original letter even
included a drawing, now lost.97 Carmi told Pescarolo that, given the
complications at birth, the infants could not have lived long enough
to endure a circumcision and confessed that he was perplexed about
what to do regarding that ritual.98 Finally, he states that he would have
treated the case as one of a child too sick to undergo the procedure – in
such an instance one waits until the child is healthy enough to be cir-
cumcised.99 Even more significantly, Carmi mentions a Talmudic debate
about the ritual impurity of the mother, ruling that had the child lived,
the mother would have been considered impure, thus confirming the
human status of the child.100 The ritual status of a postpartum woman
in the aftermath of a monstrous birth was something rabbis had to con-
sider.101 Abraham Carmi’s letter serves as a bridge between Talmudic
debates and sixteenth-century concerns and proves that Italian Jews of
Portaleone’s generation took questions of maternal ritual purity and
infant circumcision seriously.
96
Toaff, Mostri giudei: l’immaginario ebraico dal Medioevo alla prima età moderna (Bologna:
Il Mulino, 1996), 163. Toaff cites several examples of rabbis debating this, though most
of his cases date from the middle of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth
century.
97
Yaakov Boksenboim, ed., Iggrot Bet Carmi (Tel Aviv: Hayim Rozenberg, 1983), 162–3.
Carmi told Pescarolo about the ‫ צלם ודמות אשר יצוייר למטה‬For an Italian summary of this letter,
see Toaff, Mostri giudei, 143–4.
98
Boksenboim, Iggrot Bet Carmi, 163: ‫היה‬ ‫ וכן‬.‫ואאמין כי לא יוכלו להאריך לחיות זמן רב‬
99
Ibid.: ‫ אכן אם יחיו זמן מה אאמין כי יחול עליהם חובת מילה‬.‫וע"ד המילה נסתפקתי דלא גרוע מחולה שאינו נמול בזמנו‬
‫לידה‬ ‫ואמם ודאי טמאה עליהם טומאת‬
100
Mothers who gave birth to monstrous infants were considered ritually impure and forbid-
den for a specified time period from performing certain ritual acts.
101
Curiously, in medieval Hebrew gynecological texts, of which Ron Barkai gives a helpful
sampling in his A History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill,
1998), although stillbirths are a worry, such texts were concerned mostly with how to remove
them from the uterus and birth canal and how to treat the mother after such a difficult birth
(205–6). See, respectively, a Hebrew translation of Liber de symptomatibus mulierum (title
page missing, no official title) Jews’ College, Ms. Montefiore 440, fols. 60r–62r, printed in
ibid., Hebrew text 181–4; English translation 184–91, 188; and Medicament for Pregnancy
Called the Head Shield (‫)תרופות להריון נקרא מגן הראש‬, Oxford, Bodleian, Ms. Or. 2142, fols.
251v–257v, printed in ibid., Hebrew text, 192–8; English translation, 198–211, 205.
As in his letter to Cavallara on bread, much of Portaleone’s answer to

Magno’s query drew from his knowledge of ancient Greek philosophy
and medieval medical theories. But he also introduced an unlikely source
for a discussion about postpartum fetal viability: the Talmud. Just as
practical religious concerns attended this monstrous birth in Magno’s
mind, they did so in Portaleone’s as well. But he merely alludes to them
rather than directly addressing them. While sorting out the real-life rit-
ual issues the monstrous birth brought up, Portaleone waded into the
mare magnum of the Talmud. He wrote to Magno:
I know that you are curious and that you never tire of hearing [from] doc-
tors. But you should desire to hear that learned theologian, who certainly
tells the truth. I shall point out to you the place, and the magnificent gen-
tleman Gratiadio Rieti, our mutual friend, will tell you the whole matter
in his native language. The place is in the great volume of the Talmudic
Masters, which deals with purification, that is Tahorot, in the part on men-
strual separation, that is tractate niddah, the chapter [that describes] which
partial births are permitted, perek hamapelet, under the heading “Rabbi
Samlai said.” That section analyzes the position of the fetus in the uterus,
nutrition, and other things perhaps better than what most modern anato-
mists say.102
Rabbi Samlai’s thoughts on fetal nourishment and positioning come

as a part of a digression from the topic of miscarriages; the Talmudic
chapter concerns women who give birth to severely deformed children,
or even parts of a fetus.103 The main question the Talmudic rabbis are
trying to resolve in this chapter is the mother’s ritual impurity – how
long must she wait after discharging incomplete fetuses before she may
102
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 204r: “perchè so che sete
curioso, che non vi bastava di udir li medici, ma vorrete ancora sentir quel dotto theologo
che dice di certo la verità, vi segnarò anco il luoco e il Magnifico Signor Gratiadio Rieti
nostro commune amico vi dichiararà in materna lingua tutta la sentenza. Il luoco è in magno
volumine Domines Thalmudistarum, ubi agitur de Purificatione, id est ‫טהרות‬, in dictione de
menstrua separatione, id est in ‫ מסכת נדה‬capitulo ‘quae abortum patitur’ id est ‫ פרק המפלת‬sub
illa lynea ‘dixit Rabi Samlai’; in quel luogo si tratta del sito del foeto nell’utero materno,
della nutritione e de altri particolari forsi meglio di quello che ne dicino i più de’ moderni
Anatomaci.” I identify Rieti in the following section.
103
The first mishnah of this chapter discusses procedures for women who discharge “things
resembling fish, locusts, crawling insects, or worms . . . a domesticated animal, a wild animal,
or a bird.” However, the passage concludes that “anything that does not have human form
is not a child.” See BT Niddah 21a.
immerse herself in a ritual bath and become pure. The discussion affords
the participants ample opportunities to veer from the subject at hand
and deliberate other matters pertinent to neonatology and embryology.
The Babylonian Talmud Niddah (30b) records Rabbi Samlai’s words as
follows:
Its two hands rest on its two temples; its two armpits on its two ankles; its
two heels rest against its two buttocks; and its head lies between its knees.
Its mouth is closed and its navel is open, and it eats of what its mother eats
and drinks of what its mother drinks but it does not discharge excrement,
for were it to do so it might kill its mother. Once it is born and it emerges
into the air of the world, that which was closed opens and that which was
open closes; for were it not so the fetus would not be able to survive even
for a moment.104
Portaleone is interested in two aspects of Rabbi Samlai’s comment: his

insistence on umbilical nourishment in utero, and his description of fetal
placement in the womb. Ultimately, Portaleone is more interested in
the latter topic and praises Samlai for saying things “better than what
the modern anatomists say.” As we shall see, Samlai’s statements about
fetal placement constitute only one node in an extensive web of state-
ments about unusual births, embryonic health, and the religious ramifi-
cations of parturition, all of which Portaleone would have encountered
in the few pages around Rabbi Samlai’s commentary. Portaleone’s belief
in Samlai’s scientific prescience is a matter I will discuss presently. But
to whatever degree Rabbi Samlai was correct regarding fetal position-
ing, we must first ask whence came his – and by extension other Jewish
savants’ – knowledge of recondite scientific information.
Thankfully, there has been significant work dedicated to explicating
the scientific acumen of Talmudic rabbis. Julius Preuss, in his Biblical
and Talmudic Medicine, points out passages in late antique exegetical
literature as well as the Talmud that touch on fetal nourishment and
positioning. The Midrashic work Song of Songs Rabbah 7:3, for exam-
ple, observes that as long as a fetus is in its mother’s womb, it receives
nourishment only through its navel.105 In addition to the preceding
104
Translation is taken from the Soncino edition of the Talmud.
105
Julius Preuss, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, ed. and trans. Fred Rosner (New York:
Sanhedrin Press, 1978), 388.
passage concerning Rabbi Samlai, Preuss points out that Rabbi Eleazar
(BT Niddah 31a), Abba Saul, Rabbi Nahman, and Abbaye (BT Niddah
25a) all discuss the position of the fetus inside the womb.106
From the work of Preuss and his predecessors, we know a considerable
amount about Rabbi Samlai’s and other rabbis’ knowledge of human
anatomy and fetal embryology. A. H. Israëls’s discussion of Talmudic
gynecology, while dated, is the best work we have on the topic.107 In a
remark Portaleone would have approved of, Israëls notes that “in [embry-
ological] writings there exists a great amount of confusion regarding
the evolution of the embryo that may be attributed to Hippocrates.”108
Regarding the rabbis’ familiarity with Greek medicine, Israëls observes
that while the rabbis were not experts in Greek science, they were cer-
tainly familiar with it.109 More specifically, Israëls maintains that rab-
bis were especially well versed in obstetrics.110 This refined knowledge,
Israëls argues, derived from the rabbis’ awareness of the fact that one
cannot deduce anatomical data about humans from animal anatomy.
Quoting a passage from H￺ulin, a tractate in the Babylonian Talmud that
outlines the requirements of animal slaughterers and the fitness of ani-
mals for human consumption, Israëls notes that the rabbis knew that
“one cannot conclude anything about men from beasts.” Citing the well-
known fact that Galen performed his dissections on animals and not on
humans, and indulging in apologetic exaggeration, Israëls muses that
“had Galen known what the rabbis knew, he would not have committed
so many errors.”111
106
Ibid., 389. Abba Saul’s remark is quoted in A. H. Israëls’s work on Talmudic gyneco-
logy, Tentamen historico-medicum, exhibens collectanea gynaecologica, quae ex Talmude
Babylonico depromsit A. H. Israëls (Groningen: P. van Aweeden, 1845). Sotah 45b: “nam
infans quum formetur ex medio suo formatur.” (Quoted in Israëls, 46.)
107
Israëls, Tentamen historico-medicum. More recently Ron Barkai has also written about
gynecology in ancient and medieval Jewish traditions. See his Les infortunes de Dinah:
le livre de la génération: la gynécologie juive au Moyen Âge (Paris: Cerf, 1991); Barkai, A
History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts.
108
Israëls, Tentamen historico-medicum, 48.
109
Ibid., 28.
110
Ibid.
111
Ibid., 42: “Nolunt Rabbini semper concludi a brutorum corporis fabrica ad hominis for-
mationem, et praesertim non, quod attinet ad partes genitales. Dicunt enim (Chulin 68a) ‘a
bestia ad hominem non est concludendum; nam bestiis non est vestibulum; et ab homine
ad bestiam non est concludendum, quia vultui (hominis) inest quid honorabile.’ Sensus est:
corporis humani fabrica longe alia est, quam fabrica brutorum; et hanc ob rem ea quae
sectionibus brutorum inveniatur, non omnino ad humanum corpus possunt applicari.”
Apart from the child’s fitness for circumcision, and its mother’s
ritual purity, another issue that arose in connection with classifying
unusual infants as human or subhuman is whether or not the parents
of the newborn are required to redeem it. Scripture (Exodus 13:13;
Numbers 8:17) demands that parents redeem their firstborn child by
bringing a token contribution to a priest, and rabbinic law expands upon
the particulars of the obligation. The rabbis conclude that only a fetus of
human form that is truly viable required redemption in conformity with
biblical and Talmudic law.112
The Talmud’s discussion in Niddah is decisive on the subject of what
forms of new life the rabbis considered human. Evaluating the status of
a creature born with an animal’s body and a human face, the rabbis con-
clude that the mother of the infant does not need to purify herself unless
the creature has “a forehead, eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, and a chin.”113 This
remark implies that the infant must, after all, have a head. The most
definitive ruling on this issue comes when the Talmudic rabbis discuss
a fetus that emerges in human form but is missing essential parts. After
deliberating how much of the lower body is necessary for survival, the
topic shifts to the cranium. There is little debate here, and the Talmud
concludes that even if a portion of the skull is missing, the mother is
considered ritually pure – that is, the creature born to her was not a
human being.114
Rabbi Samlai, whom Portaleone designated “a theologian,” is the only
Talmudic authority Portaleone singled out from these extensive jurid-
ical debates. It is remarkable that Portaleone labeled Rabbi Samlai a
“theologian”; elsewhere in his Latin and vernacular writings he uses
less specialized language.115 His application of Christian religious ter-
minology to a Jewish authority shows how comfortable Portaleone
was describing Jewish intellectual traditions with the vocabulary of a
112
See BT Niddah 23b for this discussion and Numbers 18:15–16 and Deuteronomy 21:17 for
the scriptural sources.
113
BT Niddah 23b.
114
BT Niddah 24a.
115
Abraham Portaleone, De auro dialoghi tres (Venice: apud Iohannem Baptistam à Porta,
1584), 170, “sapientes nostri.” For discussion of this passage, though not of this termi-
nology, see Gianfranco Miletto, Glauben und Wissen im Zeitalter der Reformation: Der
salomonische Tempel bei Abraham Ben David Portaleone (1542–1612) (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2004), 253–5.
common language. It is even more noteworthy that Portaleone labels

Graziadio Rieti as our “mutual friend.” Graziadio (H￺ananel) Rieti and
his brother Vitale (Yeh￷iel) were prominent bankers in Mantua at the end
of the sixteenth century.116 It is not clear how exactly Magno might have
known him, but given Rieti’s banking connections, it is not surprising
that they knew each other or implausible that they might have. Most
unusual in this passage is Portaleone’s use of the Talmud as a histor-
ical and scientific source in a discussion about fetal nourishment and
embryonic placement.117 The fact that Portaleone – or, at the very least,
David, his son – was willing to write the name of the order, the tractate,
and the chapter in Hebrew suggests either that Magno was able to read
enough of the language to decipher a citation or, just as likely, that he
had recourse to a learned acquaintance who could.
Portaleone and Galen/Rufus

Portaleone did more than simply evoke a Talmudic authority; he jux-
taposed that authority to an ancient Greek physician. As he did years
later in his Hebrew encyclopedia Shiltei HaGibborim, Portaleone
uses Greek medicine to confirm Talmudic truths. After concluding his
praise of Rabbi Samlai’s ingenious remarks, Portaleone deems it time to
“move on to the doctors.” He adds, “Rufus says in his eleventh chap-
ter of The Introduction to Medicine, confirming Rabbi Samlai, that the
fetus is nourished by the umbilical cord and is therefore able to live
in the uterus.”118 Here Portaleone shifts his focus to fetal nourishment.
In ancient medical traditions there was considerable discussion of how
116
Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer Ltd., 1977),
357 n. 133. Graziadio Rieti was also a friend of Abraham Yagel. See David B. Ruderman,
Kabbalah, Magic and Science, 16–18, 176.
117
In the seventeenth century and in Northern Europe, scholars such as Isaac Casaubon and
John Selden incorporated Talmudic citations into their works on a variety of topics. But
examples are lacking of sixteenth-century Italian Jews including Talmudic citations in their
letters to gentile correspondents.
118
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 204r: “Solutiones ad qua-
esita proposita ab Excellentissimo D. Alexandro Magno et sunt Excellentissimi Patris.” “Ma
passiamo alli medici, Ruffo nell’Introduttorio seu Medico al capitolo xi s’accorda con Rabi
Samlai, quando disse: ‘ab umbilico autem venae ad iecinoris portas sanguinem in foetibus
transmittunt,’ dove par che voglia che per questa via sola e non per altra il foeto si nutrisca
nell’utero.”
fetuses ingested nutrients. Some authorities held that the umbilical cord
provided needed nourishment, while others insisted that an infant used
its mouth to suckle; still others tentatively argued that the mouth and
umbilical cord acted in concert.119
Portaleone’s use of an ancient Greek physician to confirm the teach-
ings of a Talmudic rabbi who lived a century and a half later seems
anachronistic and baldly apologetic to modern sensibilities. But in the
Jewish community Portaleone inhabited, sacred authorities, among
whom Talmudic rabbis ranked very high, held considerable sway over
Christian or pagan ones.120 Much more noteworthy from the perspec-
tive of the history of medicine is Portaleone’s attribution of this medi-
cal insight to Rufus. Rufus of Ephesus was a prominent physician who
flourished late in the first century A D .121 His works were just beginning
to be studied seriously in the sixteenth century. While some of Rufus’s
works were known in the late Renaissance, and many more have been
discovered since, the Introduction that Portaleone quotes in the preced-
ing passage has never definitively been attributed to Rufus.122
The passage that Portaleone quotes regarding fetal nourishment may
be found in the 1565 edition of Galen’s Opera Omnia. The Introduction
that Portaleone refers to, then, was considered one of Galen’s works in
mid-sixteenth-century editions. In the 1541 Giunti edition of Galen’s
Opera Omnia, there is discussion of Galen’s spurious works; the
Introduction was considered to be among these. However, none of the
scholars who worked on either the 1541 or the 1565 edition of Galen’s
works, each of which Portaleone would have had access to as a medical
student and a mature practitioner, attributed the Introduction to Rufus.
119
Some of these debates are summarized in Luc Brisson, Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, and
Jean-Luc Solère, eds., L’embryon: formation et animation: antiquité grecque et latine, tradi-
tions hébraïque, chrétienne et islamique (Paris: Vrin, 2008).
120
On the nature of rabbinic authority in Renaissance Italy, see Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and
Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Oxford: Littman
Library, 1990).
121
The best discussion of Rufus of Ephesus may be found in Vivian Nutton, Ancient Medicine
(London: Routledge, 2004). See bibliography there.
122
The best modern collection of Rufus’s writings is C. Daremberg and C. Émile Ruelle,
Oeuvres de Rufus d’Ephèse (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1879). It contains the complete
Greek text with a facing French translation. Caroline Petit has conducted a thorough survey
of Rufus’s works and their reception in later periods. According to her Galen, Le médecin,
introduction (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2009), no one ever attributed the Introduction to Rufus.
This appears to have been Portaleone’s original contribution to source

criticism. The sentence Portaleone quotes reads “veins transmit blood
to fetuses through the umbilical cord to the entrances of the liver.”123
Portaleone does not offer his reasons for attributing the work to Rufus;
his offhand remark belies any careful consideration of textual or histor-
ical reasons Portaleone might have called upon to make this assessment.
His may have been the first attribution of the Introduction, commonly
thought to be Galen’s, to Rufus.124
But Portaleone’s chief interest in his correspondence with Magno was
not in textual attribution but in medical science. As we have seen, ancient
authorities were divided on the issue of how fetuses were nourished in
the womb. Portaleone himself provides a helpful introduction to these
debates. He reminds Magno that “Hippocrates, in De carnibus, wants
to say that the child is nourished through its mouth, but in reality he
says that an infant’s lips are pressed together in the womb, so it receives
food and spirit from the mother through a cord.”125 That is to say that
Hippocrates, according to Portaleone, contradicts himself, wishing to
say one thing but providing evidence to the contrary.126 The Mantuan
123
See Galen, “Introductio, seu medicus,” chap. 11 in Galeni Isagogici libri (Venice: Giunti,
1586), 54v: “ab umbilico autem venae ad iecinoris portas sanguinem in foetibus transmit-
tunt: arteriae vero iuxta vesicam, crassiori arteriae: nervuus hic spinae insertatur.”
124
Petit, Galen, demonstrates that attributions of Galen’s Introduction seu medicus to Rufus
occurred only in the modern period. I have not been able to examine Dr. Petit’s work. I wish
to thank Nancy Siraisi for corresponding with me on this matter.
125
Portaleone, Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, “Solutiones ad quae-
sita proposita ab Excellentissimo D. Alexandro Magno et sunt Excellentissimi Patris,”
204r–204v. “‘Non enim ab ea solum, quae per umbilicum ad portas in iecur e secundis
fertur materia, nutrivi putatur. Etenim per has quoque vias alitur, maxime vero per eas,
quae perfectiores sunt et per quascunque defertur, nutrimento fruitur. Neque enim putabis
Hippocratem dicentem, quod antiquius est nutrimentum per abdomen, qua umbilicum est,
invehi, ignorasse num id ore nutriatur. Etenim de hac quoque via locutus est etc.’; e perchè
gli pare che non accade a provar che ‘per umbilicum nutriatur fœtus,’ si volta all’altra, et
adduce due raggioni tolte però da Hippocrate nel libro detto di sopra cioè de Carnibus.”
126
See Hippocrates’ remarks in Magni Hippocratis medicorum omnium facile principis opera
omnia quae extant (Frankfurt: apud heredes Andreae Wecheli, 1596), section III, De carni-
bus, 209: “At vero puer dum in utero est, compressis labris ex matris utero tum alimentum
sugit, tum etiam spiritum, qui in puero caldissimus est, ubi sane mater respirat, in cor attra-
hit. . . . Quod si quis roget, unde hoc quis noscit, quod puer in utero trahat et sugat, hoc illi
respondere licet. Pueri cum in lucem prodeunt, stercus in intestinis habere conspiciuntur,
et simul ac in lucem editi sunt, tum homines, tum percora, id iis per ventrem secedit. Atqui
neque stercus haberet, nisi in utero sugeret, neque; ut primum puer natus est, ubera sugere
nosset, nisi in utero suxisset.”
physician points out that “Hippocrates says that in order for an infant
to receive nourishment through the mouth after it is born it must be able
to use its mouth when it is in the womb” and glosses this by exclaiming
“O beautiful reason! O true and overblown conjecture! Since a kid is
born and immediately begins to walk, run, and jump, surely therefore it
walked and jumped inside the womb of the nanny goat!”127 Resuming a
more solemn tone, Portaleone writes, “Signor Alessandro: whoever reads
these books uncritically without thoroughly considering the truth of
things often finds himself deceived and that these writers are not deserv-
ing of the trust he has [in them].” In conclusion, he maintains that “it is
not true that the fetus nourishes itself through the mouth while in the
uterus, as these fathers of medicine say.”128 Having ridiculed Hippocrates,
whose authority was nearly beyond reproach in mid-sixteenth-century
Italy, Portaleone asserted his own intellectual independence. Not wish-
ing to leave Magno utterly confounded, he urges his correspondent to
“read Realdo Colombo in his book on the formation of the fetus . . . [the
fetus] receives nourishment through the umbilical vein.”129
Portaleone and Colombo

Abraham Portaleone had a habit of enthusiastically endorsing modern
scientific works. In the middle of a thorny discussion about the herb
balsam in his Hebrew encyclopedia Shiltei HaGibborim, Portaleone
advised his readers to “go read the books of Prospero Alpino.”130 Alpino
127
Portaleone, “Solutiones ad Quaesita proposita ab Excellentissimo D. Alexandro Magno et
sunt Excellentissimi Patris,” in Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 204v:
“Quod vero in utero ore nutrimentum summat, testis est post partum protinus mammae
appetitum, neque non nisi antea huic viae assuetus esset, tam cito ad mammam ferretur, che
risponde a quelle parole de Hippocrate imo neque mamma statim ut natu est sugere noscet
si non in utero suxisset. O bella ragione, o vera e arteficiosa coniettura, il capretto subito
nato camina, corre e salta, dunque ha caminato certo e saltato nel ventre della capra.”
128
Ibid., 205r: “Signor Alessandro chi legge i libri oscitantemente, senza considerar bene la
verità delle cose, si trova spesse volte ingannato, nè vale la fiducia che si ha alla gravità de’
scrittori, perchè ancor essi, come homeni, pono declinare dalla verità e dalla via retta disput-
tando delle cose incerte. Non è vero che’l foeto si nutrisca per la bocca, mentre sta nell’utero,
come dissero questi padri della medicina.”
129
Ibid., 205r: “Legete Realdo Colombo nel suo trattato de formatione foetus che da lui come
da authore più esperto che non furono Hippocrate e Galeno in questa parte, intenderete che
non si puo nutrire per quella via se non con la sua morte . . . non è perciò che si sia nutrito
per la bocca, ma per la vena umbelicare.”
130
Portaleone, SG, 95v.
resolved many of the difficult issues with which Portaleone struggled.

On the topics of fetal nourishment and positioning, Portaleone turned
to Realdo Colombo’s works. Colombo filled in the gaps of Portaleone’s
understanding on those two issues, but he also appealed to Portaleone
for another reason: he emphasized the inherent difficulty of embryol-
ogy as a subject and underscored its quasi-divine status in relation to
other areas of scientific inquiry. A group of sixteenth-century anatomists
anticipated and echoed Colombo, including Gabriele Fallopia, Andreas
Vesalius, and Conrad Gesner. Because of his scientific respectability, and
his insistence on the connections between science and faith, Colombo
was an ideal author for Portaleone to invoke as a modern mouthpiece
for Rabbi Samlai.
First published in 1559, Realdo Colombo’s De re anatomica liber was
widely known in the second half of the sixteenth century.131 Originally
hailing from Cremona, Colombo taught anatomy in Rome while he
wrote his great anatomical work. Near the beginning of his remarks
on embryology, Colombo stressed the subject’s seriousness. “It must be
noted before all else,” Colombo observed, “prudent and pious reader,
that one cannot think anything more astonishing than the generation of
man, or rather the fetus. Nothing else seems to be equal in nature to a
miracle, and nothing else inflames men to love of divine providence and
wisdom.” The subject, Colombo continued, “represents something you
can better admire than praise, and praise more than you are able to dis-
cern precisely.”132 Before beginning his scientific exploration of the topic,
Colombo warns his readers of the complexity of the task at hand.
Portaleone learned much from Colombo’s treatment of embryonic
nourishment. Proclaiming that the umbilical cord is the sole medium
through which an embryo obtains nourishment, Colombo criticizes
131
Realdi Columbi Cremonensis De re anatomica libri XV (Venice: ex typographia Nicolai
Beuilacquæ, 1559). On Colombo, see DBI 27:241–3. I have used the 1562 edition: De re
anatomica libri XV (Paris: Aegidium Gillium, 1562).
132
Realdo Colombo, De re anatomica libri XV (Paris: Aegidium Gillium, 1562), book XII, De
formatione foetus, ac de situ infantis in utero, 451: “qua in re illud primum admonendus est
prudens, piusque lector, hominis generatione, foetus inquam, formatione nihil admirabilius
excogitari posse, nihil quod aeque naturae miraculum videatur esse, nihil quod humanum
genus divinae providentiae, sapientiaeque amore magis inflammet. Ea enim arte effictus est,
atque efformatus hominis foetus, ut illam admirari magis, quam laudare, laudare magis,
quam exacte introspicere omnia possis.”
Hippocrates for his shortsightedness: “The fetus receives nourishment

through the power of the umbilical vein when it is in its mother’s uterus.
What the great Hippocrates, who alone could not know everything, said
about the nourishment of children in the womb is pure fantasy, namely
that the fetus suckles through its mouth. Evidently many men were led
into error, such that I cannot stop marveling at it.” Colombo finishes
his critical remarks with a simple declaration: the fetus “is nourished
through the umbilical vein.”133 This argument for fetal nourishment, as
well as Colombo’s strongly critical stance against Hippocrates, would
have appealed to Portaleone and served him well in his quest to persuade
Alessandro Magno.
Colombo’s discussion of embryonic placement, which figures even
more prominently in De re anatomica, helped Portaleone even more.
Denouncing all previous attempts to understand fetal positioning,
Colombo boldly advises his “candid reader” to “skip past other works,
for they do not see the thing itself but rather a version of it, and that is
what they end up writing about.” Colombo, of course, pursues a different
strategy. “I am not like that,” he asserts, “for very often I have observed
not dead fetuses, but living ones, which I have extracted with my very
own hands from the mother’s uterus; then I take proper note of its place-
ment in the uterus.” As a result of these numerous experiences, Colombo
boasted, “I could easily tell how different [fetal placement] is from some
pictures of the anatomists, such that I could not help marveling at their
temerity, given that they were wrong, and that [their drawings] went
far beyond sense – they were not even ashamed to leave [these] written
[matters] to posterity.”134 Colombo’s position is clear: other anatomists
133
Ibid., 459–60: “Foetus in matris utero alimentum per umbilicum suscipit, venae umbili-
calis ope: fabulaeque sunt, quas magnus Hippocrates, qui omnia scire non potuit solus,
de pueri nutrimento in alvo matris dixit: quod scilicet per os exugat: et profecto tanti viri
errorem tam crassum nequeo satis mirari. Nam inter os foetus, matricisque substantiam
multum interest sed fac nullum inter haec spatium dari: age, os foetus uteri corpus attingat:
quo pacto succum, qui vel in matris ventriculo est, aut in intestinis, exugere posset optime
Hippocrates? Quamobrem haud dubie scias candide lector, foetum nihil prorsus per os assu-
mere. Quod si assumeret, suo ipsius sudore hausto obrutus non interire non posset: sed per
venam umbilicalem duntaxat nutriri, nutriri inquam bono sanguine, atque adeo perfecto
qui per vasa seminaria defertur: quod idcirco factum fuit, ut materiam una cum sanguine
continenter deorsum ferrent, tanquam auxiliares copias, si quandoque sanguis deesset.”
134
Ibid., 463: “de foetus formatione satis multa hactenus dicta sunt: nunc de situ eius in utero
dicamus. Quam partem libentius, ut opinor, lector candidus percurret, quod alii non rem
have observed only dead fetuses, or no fetuses at all, and have based
their illustrations on either aberrations or fantasies, and have permitted
themselves to write on the basis of false conjecture. He, on the other
hand, had direct experience examining fetal positioning, and as a result
his readers should take his findings more seriously.
Colombo’s discussion of uterine fetal positioning is more nuanced
than Rabbi Samlai’s; still, in Portaleone’s reading it substantiates the
Talmudic master’s embryonic expertise. In contrast to Rabbi Samlai,
who described one typical position, Colombo discerned three. “There
are three positions in the uterus that I acknowledge having observed.”
“The first,” Colombo notes, “is where the head is tilted downward,
and this is the most frequent. The second is where the head is tilted
upward, and this is seen only rarely. The third is a transverse lie, but
this is even more rare.”135 Beyond these specificities, Colombo offers
some general observations that are much more detailed than those of
Rabbi Samlai:
The infant is in a globe or a sphere, an oblong sphere . . . the right arm is
bent, the outer hand has its fingers extended, below the ear and above the
neck. The left arm is not extended above the right part of the chest, and
certainly not above the face (since the head is tilted in the uterus) . . . the left
arm supports the right elbow with its fingers semiextended, with the thumb
pointing downward. The legs are very carefully brought upward, and they
are bent, such that [the fetus] is on its head – it is a most beautiful thing to
see and is admirable. The femur, the tibia, and the right foot are bent, such
ipsam, sed quod verisimile cuique visum est, ita scriptum reliquerunt: omnes tamen a rei
veritate tam aberrarunt, quam qui maxime. Ego vero non semel, sed saepius non modo mor-
tuos foetus, sed vivos etiam e matris utero hisce manibus extraxi quod dum efficerem, situm
eius in utero diligenter observavi, quem a quibusdam Anatomicorum picturis adeo diversum
esse facile perspexi, ut non potuerim eorum temeritatem non valde mirari, qui quod falsum
est, cuius oppositum sensu deprehendi potest, posteris scriptum relinquere non erubuerint.”
Colombo may have had in mind such treatises as Jakob Rueff’s De conceptu et generatione
hominis, et iis quae circa haec potissimum considerantur, libri sex (Zurich: Christophorus
Froschoverus, 1554), which featured highly schematic illustrations. I thank Nancy Siraisi
for pointing this out to me.
135
Colombo, De re anatomica libri XV, 463–4: “Tres igitur foetus in utero situs observasse
fateor, et profiteor, praeterea nullos, quorum prior est caput deorsum versum, hicque est
situs omnium frequentissimus. Secundus capite sursum elato, quo situ raro videntur infantes
in utero. Tertius transversim iacet, atque hic est secundo rarior, propterea priore situ infantes
capita praeeunte [sic: praevente] in lucem prodeunt. Secundi pedibus, qui et agrippae vocan-
tur. Tertii natibus, facie omnes coccygem matris versus respiciunt.”
that they are touching the femur and the abdomen, with the knee touching
the umbilical cord. The tibia is bent downward, and the sole of the left
foot is touching the buttocks, and the foot is elevated, the private parts
are hidden, so that half of the thumb and the tibia are turned above the
abdomen and the thorax, and are below the outer arm. The foot is turned
outward, attached to the right elbow and the left metacarpus. The back is
in the anterior position, such that [the fetus] can escape from its elongated
global sphere.136
Colombo was confident enough in his findings to share them with

esteemed colleagues. Colombo boasted that “this is the true and legit-
imate positioning of the human fetus in the uterus, which I showed to
Giacomo Antonio Buoni of Ferrara, the eminent physician, who teaches
medical simples in the Roman Academy, as well as anatomy, and is very
accomplished in all the other noble arts and sciences.”137 At the end of
his thoughts on embryology, Colombo closes with a pious salutation:
“Who, contemplating the generation, nutrition, and positioning of the
human fetus, is not astonished? Who is able to praise God sufficiently
in his infinite goodness? It is enough to trust in these matters, and to say
136
Ibid., 464–5: “quocunque autem situ ex hoc triplici toties euumerato [sic: enumerato] nos
uterus exceperit: in globum atque orbem excipimur, sphaericusque est omnis situs infantis
in utero: sphaericus inquam in oblongum vergens, et ut privatim res magis innotescat, dex-
terum brachium nobis tunc flectitur, manus autem extrema una cum digitis extenditur, qui
digiti sub aure dextera, superque cervice positi sunt: sinistrum vero brachium tantum non
extenditur, supraque sinistram mammam, necnon supra faciem (caput nanque in utero ita
flectitur, ut mentum ad thoracem perveniat): sinistrum itaque brachium medio cubito dex-
tero fulcitur digitis semiextensis, pollice deorsum. Crura tanta arte sursum feruntur, et incu-
ruantur, quasi in arcum ut dicu, visuque res pulcherrima, et admirabilis existat. Femur, tibia,
pesque extremus dexter nobis eo tempore flectuntur, adeo ut a femore abdomen attingatur,
a genu umbilicus, deinde tibia deorsum flectitur, calceque sinistras nates attingit, extremum
elevans pedem, pudendaque occultans, adeo ut pollice dimidium, tibiam ipsemet tangat,
sinistrum crus ipsum quoque semiflectitur, femur ventrem imum tangit, tibia supra abdo-
men, thoracemque vertitur, et sub extremum brachium. Pes autem extremus sursum voluitur
dextrum ὠλέκρανον attingens, sinistrique brachii μετακάρπιον. Dorsum deinde in anteriora
fertur, adeo ut ex his omnibus globus sphaericus oblongus evadat.”
137
Ibid, 465: “Atque hic est verus, et legitimus situs humani foetus in utero, quem ego Iacobo
Antonio Bono Ferrariensi Medico praecellenti, qui simplicia medicamenta in Romana
Academia publice profitetur, estque rei Anatomicae, reliquarumque bonarum artium, et
scientiarum tam studiosus, quam qui maxime, cum eum unicè diligam, primum lubens
ostendi.” Bono, or Buoni, was the author of Del terremoto dialogo (Modena: Paolo Gadaldini
et fratelli, 1571), which Azariah de’ Rossi quotes several times in his Me’or Enayim. See
Azariah de’ Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, trans. and ed. Joanna Weinberg (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2001), 14, 22, 301–2, and 659.
little.”138 Colombo’s pious packaging of his anatomical investigations met

with Portaleone’s approval and provided another reason for him to use
Colombo’s text to corroborate the words of his rabbinic predecessor.
Conclusion
Jacques Roger has shown how up until the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury religious questions played an important role in the development of
the natural sciences.139 Issues of faith and the scrutiny of religious texts
played significant roles in prompting and directing medical explorations
of the antiquarian and the anomalous. Renaissance doctors drew on
sacred texts to enlarge their understanding of medical arts. Talal Asad
has persuasively argued that religious texts, beliefs, and suppositions
can instigate decidedly nonreligious explorations.140 Portaleone’s letters
underscore Asad’s point: they constitute scientific excurses catalyzed by
religious concerns.
In the late Renaissance Jews drew attention to classical Jewish
sources, which were then absorbed by Christians who wished to supple-
ment their scientific learning. The foregoing material underscores how
Jews, and not merely Jewish texts, had a unique role to play in Christian
use of classical Jewish texts. Contemporary scholarship insists that
Christians were mainly interested in Jewish books, and less so in Jews
themselves, to confirm Christian doctrines or convert Jews.141 Similarly,
historians have not recognized that Jews freely shared their religious and
intellectual resources with Christians with no ulterior motive beyond
138
Colombo, De re anatomica libri XV, 465: “Quis enim foetus humani generationem, nutri-
tionem, situmque contemplatus non obstupescat? Quis Dei infinitam bonitatem satis laudet?
Equidem de his silere satius est, quam pauca dicere.”
139
Jacques Roger, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du XVIII siècle (Paris: A. Colin,
1963). For an earlier adumbration of this view, see Walter Pagel, “Religious Motives in the
Medical Biology of the XVIIth Century,” Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 3
(1935): 97–128, 213–31, 265–312. Reprinted with original pagination in Marianne Winder,
ed., Religion and Neoplatonism in Renaissance Medicine (London: Variorum, 1985).
140
Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2003).
141
See, for example, Alba Paladini’s Il De arcanis di Pietro Galatino: traditio giudaica e nuove
istanze filologiche (Lecce: Congedo, 2004). For an important exception, see Anthony
Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon,
the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2011), chap. 5.
the advancement of scientific knowledge. Christian physicians such as

Alessandro Magno and Giovanni Battista Cavallara asked Jews about
topics that they presumed Mosaic tradition could help inform, and Jews
such as Portaleone distributed their faith’s intellectual resources in order
to aid natural philosophical investigations.
Portaleone saw his Christian colleagues as true intellectual partners
and considered himself part of their professional society. There is no
better proof of this than the way he describes his fellow members of
Mantua’s College of Physicians. In a postscript to his Hebrew ency-
clopedia, Portaleone recollected how “in the year 1566, on the 19th
of Elul, the third of September, the week of the pericope atem nitza-
vim (Deuteronomy 29:9–30:20), the College of Physicians of Mantua
accepted me [as a member].” He went on to observe that “at the time
there were thirty-five doctors, all wise and men of understanding. They
permitted me to practice medicine like their other physicians in Mantua
and its environs.”142 Writing in Hebrew for Jewish readers, Portaleone
boasted of his membership in Mantua’s medical community and his par-
ticipation in Christian society. His Latin and vernacular correspondence
with Christian physicians confirms his claims, and his free dispensation
of Talmudic learning to contribute to their scientific investigations is
direct proof of the close connections between Portaleone and his gentile
colleagues, as well as those between religious studies and medical science
at the end of the sixteenth century.
142
SG, unnumbered folio corresponding to 185v: ‫ובשנת ש''כו י''ט אלול ג' סיטימברי פרשת אתם נצבים‬
‫קבלוני רופאי הקולוגיאו במנטובה שהיו אז שלשים וחמשה כלם חכמים ונבונים והרשוני לרפאת כשאר רופאיהם‬
‫במנטובה וחוצה לה‬
5
“I Seek the Truth from Whomever Pronounces It”
Abraham Portaleone and Ancient

Israelite Incense
Ulisse Aldrovandi’s hunt for biblical manna in the Dolomite foothills

and David de’ Pomi’s insistence that the biblical stone tarshish could
be found in Venetian marketplaces exemplify a shift in how Italian
physicians studied the natural philosophy of the biblical world at the
close of the sixteenth century. They no longer believed that the best
way to understand the Bible was by clarifying its obscure passages with
material drawn from other ancient texts. Instead they sought out mod-
ern books and material objects that could supplement and transform
their understanding of the Bible’s natural details. Aldrovandi and de’
Pomi were hardly alone; Abraham Portaleone’s study of ancient Jewish
antiquities bears witness to a similar approach to biblical naturalia.
Shiltei HaGibborim (Shields of the mighty), Portaleone’s self-published
Hebrew encyclopedia printed in Mantua by Moses Elishama ben Israel
Zifroni of Guastalla in 1612, contains a lengthy excursus on biblical
incense.1 Portaleone’s encyclopedia was framed as a hortatory address
The best introduction to SG is Die Heldenschilde. Vom Hebräischen ins Deutsche übersetzt
1
und kommentiert von Gianfranco Miletto, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002), 1:21–75.
According to its title page, the book was printed “by his [Portaleone’s] commission and
in his house,” ‫ במצותו ובביתו‬For more, see Miletto, Glauben und Wissen im Zeitalter der
Reformation: der salomonishce Tempel bei Abraham ben David Portaleone (1542–1612)
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 15 and notes there. Recently David Garber and Yo’el Katan pub
lished an edition of SG with some explanatory notes (Jerusalem, 2009). See also Miletto, La
biblioteca di Avraham ben David Portaleone secondo l’inventario della sua eredità (Florence:
Olschki, 2013). Unfortunately, Dr. Miletto’s book was published after I had submitted the
A portion of this chapter previously appeared as “Judah Moscato, Abraham Portaleone, and
Biblical Incense in Late Renaissance Mantua,” in Gianfranco Miletto and Giuseppe Veltri, eds.,
Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish Intellectual World of Mantua in the 16th–17th Century
(Leiden: Brill, 2012), 105–19.
194
“I Seek the Truth from Whomever Pronounces It” 195
to its author’s children and structured as a study of Solomon’s Temple.

It charts the dimensions of that edifice, describes the details of its con-
struction, and studies the practices associated with the ancient sacrifi-
cial cult, including the assembly and burning of incense. Its chapters
on incense have two goals: to identify the elements of biblical incense,
only some of which are specified in scripture, and to instruct readers
how to make a vital component of the incense mixture – the anointing
oil. Shiltei HaGibborim’s study of incense accomplishes those goals by
transposing trends new to sixteenth-century botany, and natural philos-
ophy more generally, to the study of Jewish texts. Among these trends
were a preference for modern scientific writings rather than classical
ones and an openness to nonbookish sources of knowledge, chiefly arti-
sanal expertise. The transposition of habits of thought characteristic of
the medical profession and the natural philosophic community to the
study of religious texts engendered a critical stance toward received
tradition – rabbinic and scientific alike.
Modern scholarship has not recognized the important role of
Portaleone’s medical education and practice in his encyclopedic work.
Though contemporary evaluations of Portaleone’s writings have moved
away from Cecil Roth’s diagnosis of Portaleone as “discursive to the
verge of eccentricity,”2 very little recent work has endeavored to mea-
sure Portaleone’s scholarly reach or assess his scientific achievement. A
few studies have mentioned Portaleone’s interest in incense. Alessandro
Guetta and Samuel Kottek, in essays focused on other aspects of
Shiltei HaGibborim, each note Portaleone’s treatment of the subject.3
Gianfranco Miletto devotes several pages of his book on Portaleone to
incense in the ancient temple.4 Most recently, Peter Miller has flagged
final version of this typescript, and I was unable to consult it. For more on Moshe Elishama
ben Israel Zifroni of Guastalla, see the literature cited in Chapter 3, note 48.
2
Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of
America, 1977 [1959]), 318.
3
Alessandro Guetta, “Avraham Portaleone, le scientifique repenti”; Guetta, “Abraham
Portaleone From Science to Mysticism,” in Judit Targarona Borrás and Angel Sáenz-
Badillos, eds., Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, vol. 2: Judaism from the
Renaissance to Modern Times (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 40–7; Samuel S. Kottek, “Jews between
Profane and Sacred Science in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Abraham Portaleone,” in
Jurgen Helm and Annette Winkelman, eds., Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the
Sixteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 108–18.
4
Miletto, Glauben und Wissen, 226–38.
Portaleone’s digressive treatment of natural history and the spice trade

as emblematic of an early modern, encyclopedic disposition.5 In spite
of this awareness of the role of botany in Shiltei HaGibborim, there
is no article-length treatment of Portaleone’s study of the composition
of ancient incense, the precise details of which, according to rabbinic
tradition, were transmitted to Moses by God himself on Mount Sinai.6
Similarly, scant scholarship addresses the centrality of medicine in his
printed oeuvre.
Abraham Portaleone’s work on the ancient Jewish incense mixture is a
significant achievement of Renaissance scholarship and an unusual contri-
bution to premodern Jewish thought. Shiltei HaGibborim’s eleven chapters
on incense, which comprise more than 12 percent of the total work, are
especially notable for two reasons. First, they advocate and enable recon-
struction of the ancient incense mixture, which was proscribed in Jewish
law. Second, they are highly critical of Portaleone’s rabbinic forbears.
A central theme emerges from an examination of Portaleone’s work on
incense: to the mind of an early modern Jewish physician, rabbinic knowl-
edge of natural history is deficient. In his chapters on incense, Portaleone
routinely censures rabbinic authorities ranging from Talmudic redactors
to medieval and early modern luminaries such as Rashi, Gersonides, Ibn
Ezra, Radak, Sforno, and Abravanel.7 Although Portaleone respects his
rabbinic forbears, he disparages their scientific acumen.
Portaleone’s critical stance toward rabbis’ botanical knowledge runs
parallel to, and was stimulated by, his dissatisfaction with ancient Greek
and Roman botanical authorities. As such, his negative evaluation of
rabbinic literature must be understood as an adaptation of Renaissance
debates about the fallibility of ancient and medieval scientific sources.8
Shiltei HaGibborim’s exploration of ancient incense relies much more on
the work of fifteenth-century explorers, sixteenth-century botanists, and
contemporary pharmacists than on either ancient scientific authorities
5
Peter N. Miller, “Lost and Found,” Jewish Quarterly Review 97:4 (2007): 502–7.
6
See BT Keritot 6v.
7
Rashi: Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaqi, 1040–1105; Gersonides: Rabbi Gerson ben Levi, 1288–
1344; Ibn Ezra: Abraham ibn Ezra, 1092–1167; Radak: Rabbi David Kimh￷i, 1160–1235;
Sforno: Rabbi Ovadiah ben Jacob, 1475–1550; Abravanel: Isaac Abravanel, 1438–1508.
8
For a summary in the context of Renaissance botany, see Brian Ogilvie, The Science of
Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2006).
or Portaleone’s Jewish predecessors. Analyzing Portaleone’s working

methods and his encyclopedia’s critical features tells us not only about
one particular premodern Italian Jewish thinker but also about the study
of religious texts by early modern physicians.
Why Incense?
Incense was an important part of cultural and religious life on the Italian
Peninsula during the second half of the sixteenth century. The twenty-
second session of the Council of Trent, held on 17 September 1562 under
the aegis of Pope Pius IV, affirmed the centrality of incense as a compo-
nent of Catholic worship that would “excite the minds of the faithful”
and assist them in the “contemplation of those most sublime things that
are hidden in this sacrifice.”9 The role of incense as an aid to worship
even plays a part in popular fiction concerned with this period: Maria
Bellonci’s Segreti dei Gonzaga depicts the young Vincenzo, Duke of
Mantua from 1587 until 1612, praying in churches saturated with the
odors of incense.10 Beyond its everyday use in church ceremonies, early
modern Italians were also interested in the incense of the ancient world.
David de’ Pomi, whose work was the subject of Chapter 3, includes in
his Italian definition of the Hebrew term for “Lebanon” the following
observation: “Everyone who passes by that mountain affirms that they
smell a fragrance of marvelous quality, and attests that the scent is still
present two hundred fifty miles from the mountain.” He goes on to add
that the cedar wood used to build the ceiling beams of Solomon’s temple
“is extremely durable and knotted and does not putrefy. It is no wonder
that Salomon put this [wood] to use in building the Temple, which, owing
to its material and its divine composition, might still be found today in
its pristine state.”11 Indeed, the oil (or resin) from trees that grew upon
9
Council of Trent, session 22, 17 September 1562, chap. 5, “De Missae caeremoniis et riti-
bus.” The relevant passage reads “ut mysticas benedictiones, lumina, thymiamata, vestes
aliaque id genus multa ex apostolica disciplina et traditione . . . et mentes fidelium per haec
visibilia religionis et pietatis signa ad rerum altissimarum, quae in hoc sacrificio latent, con-
templationem excitarentur.” See A. L. Richter, Canones et decreta concilii tridentini (Leipzig:
typis et sumptibus B. Tauchnitii, 1853), 126.
10
Maria Bellonci, Segreti dei Gonzaga (Milan: Mondadori, 1947), 14.
11
David de’ Pomi, ‫צמח דוד‬, Dittionario novo Hebraico (Venice, 1587), 70b, col. 1: “Chiunque
passa per quel monte dicono sentire una refraganza di odore maraviglioso, affermano
Mount Lebanon in the Queen of Sheba’s fabled realm yielded two of the
four incense elements specified in scripture: frankincense and myrrh.
Ancient incense and its modern derivatives attracted more than just epi-
sodic attention from sixteenth-century European scholars, Portaleone being
one of them. There are at least two reasons the Mantuan physician might
have been interested in incense. One is that some Jews in Portaleone’s time
believed that reciting liturgical passages containing the incense mixture
could obviate and even eliminate the effects of the plague.12 The second is
that Portaleone’s training in medicine, and his practice as a physician in
Mantua, accustomed him to study spices and herbs. Apart from the admin-
istration of herbs as medicaments, Portaleone would have learned how to
describe plants and compare samples with accounts of them in ancient
botanical texts as part of his education in medical “simples” at Padua.13
Portaleone’s botanical education, medical practice, and familiarity with
Jewish liturgy stimulated him to investigate this antiquarian topic.
Identifying the Elements of Incense: Portaleone’s

Criticism of Rabbinic Sources
Portaleone’s work on incense may be divided into two sections: a pre-
liminary one in which he identifies elements of ancient incense and a
later one in which he constructs a portion of it.14 Both show signs of
parimente esser di lunghezza più di 250 miglia. Li arbori di cedro non patiscono corrottione,
essendo legno durissimo e nodoso, laonde non è meraviglia se Salomone lo mise in opera per
l’edificio del Tempio, il quale, ancor che per la materia e per la Divina compositione fosse
stato possibile che hoggidì se ritrovasse nel suo pristino essere, tuttavia (per i nostri peccati)
non pasò 410 anni dopo l’esser edificato che andò in rovina e l’altro rifatto non arrivò alli
420. Dicono anco di quel legno cavarsene un’olio, il quale non lassa putrefar cosa unta con
esso.”
12
S. D. Luzzato, Mavo le-mah￵zor benei Roma (Livorno: S. Beleforti, 1855) (reissued by
Daniel Goldschmidt, ed. [Tel Aviv: Devir, 1965]). Portaleone’s younger Mantovano coreli-
gionist Abraham Catalano clearly believed in the benefit of reciting an enumeration of the
biblical pitom qetoret, or incense mixture. In his 1631 work Olam Hafukh (for full cita-
tion, see Introduction, note 50) Catalano writes that the Jewish community of Pisa would
chant the pitom qetoret liturgy every Monday and Thursday in the synagogue. See Olam
Hafukh, 74.
13
Courses in botany and medical “simples” were given at Padua from the 1540s on. See Paula
Findlen, “The Formation of a Scientific Community: Natural History in Sixteenth-Century
Italy,” in Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, eds., Natural Particulars: Nature and the
Disciplines in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 369–400, 370.
14
For a list of ingredients mentioned in the Bible and Babylonian Talmud, see Appendix I.
his critical engagement with Jewish tradition and creative importation

of natural philosophy into sacred studies. Current scholarship on
Portaleone emphasizes his fidelity to Jewish traditions. However, it is
clear from an examination of Shiltei HaGibborim that its author rou-
tinely moves away from rabbinic teachings and privileges other sources
of scientific knowledge. Gianfranco Miletto, the chief authority on
Portaleone, maintains that “Portaleone’s description of the temple faith-
fully follows biblical and rabbinic texts.”15 The following remarks inves-
tigate Portaleone’s scholarly criticism of rabbinic natural science and
show that Portaleone’s work was more serious – and more subversive –
than historians acknowledge.
There is a considerable gap between Portaleone’s professed method
for his botanical research and his actual practice. Well into the series of
chapters that constitute his work on incense, Portaleone describes his
research method. Discussing the identity of yein qaprisin, one of the ele-
ments in ancient incense not specified in the Bible and often understood
by postclassical commentators as Cypriot wine, Portaleone pauses and
previews his method for this investigation. In fact, it may be applied
not only to yein qaprisin but to his whole project of identifying incense:
“First of all I shall investigate if anyone among our sages of former gen-
erations has told us what this yein qaprisin is. After this I shall inform
you what my heart has already indicated to me about the matter . . .
and finally I shall report why I have deviated from the long-established
learned tradition.”16 Conspicuously absent from this summary of his
method is any mention of Greek or Roman scientific works; in fact,
Dioscorides, Pliny, and Theophrastus are cited in these chapters nearly
as often as Talmudic rabbis and their postclassical successors. More sig-
nificantly, his statement does no justice to the frequency with which he
quotes modern authors or confesses to having learned from pharmacists
and Mantuan artisans.
15
Miletto, Glauben und Wissen, 264.
16
SG, 91b: ‫ אחרי כן אגיד לכם‬.‫קודם כל דבר אחקור אם יש בחכמינו הקודמים מי שאמר לנו מה הוא היין קפריסין הלזה‬
‫ וסוף סוף אכתוב מפני מה נטיתי מהגרסא הנהוגה מימי עולם‬. . . ‫ מה שבשכבר לבי אמר לי עליו‬David Ruderman
has shown how in the middle of the eighteenth century the Ferrarese rabbi and physician
Isaac Lampronti articulated a similar position in his writings on the permissibility of killing
lice on the Sabbath. See Isaac Lampronti, Pah￵ad Yiz￱hak (Lyck: Mekitse nirdamim, 1874
[1750–]), 21r–22v, and David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in
Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 256–72. For Cyprus wine,
see Appendix I.
At the beginning of his cluster of chapters on incense, Portaleone is

pessimistic about his chances of successfully identifying all the spices in
the ancient incense mixture. He notes that scripture specifically states
what only four of the elements in that mixture are, leaving eleven ingre-
dients that need to be researched. The prospects of identifying the others
are dim, especially since, as Portaleone notes, all the commentators differ
from one another when it comes to identifying spices. He laments that
in the explanation of spices for the incense all of the commentators are per-
plexed. This one says one thing, and another says something else, accord-
ing to their imagination and dreams. Until now I have not seen one among
them who arrived with certainty at the truth about the essence of incense.
Therefore I shook out the bosom of my garment (Nehemiah 5:13) and
toiled in order to find useful sayings and truthful words; I shall offer them
up in print for everyone’s acceptance.17
This passage expresses Portaleone’s determination to discover the truth

about the ancient incense mixture and announces that he is doing so
because of the lack of quality studies on the topic in medieval rabbinic
literature. In his investigation of tzori (balsam), Portaleone expresses faith
that God will assist him in his unprecedented efforts. Instead, he turns to
a more earthly source, transcribing the Greek botanist Dioscorides’ full
description of that plant.18
This devotion to Dioscorides as a principle source is indicative of
Portaleone’s intellectual proclivities. Early in his work, he relies on
ancient Greek works to identify biblical and Talmudic botanical terms
and fill in the gaps in rabbinic analyses. As a prerequisite to identify-
ing the elements of the spice mixture Portaleone convinces his readers
that what the rabbis wrote is insufficient. The most common method
Portaleone employs to achieve this is to ridicule medieval rabbis’ knowl-
edge of Greek botanists and the Greek language. After a discussion about
the medicinal properties of balsam, Portaleone highlights the similarities
17
SG, 81a: ‫הנה בפירוש סממני הקטרת נבוכו המפרשים כלם זה אומר בכה וזה אומר בכה כפי דמיונם וחלומותם ולא‬
‫ לכן נערתי את חצני ויגעתי למצא דברי חפץ קושט דברי אמת אעלם‬.‫ראיתי עד הנה מי שבא על נכון על אמתת מהותם‬
‫כולם‬ ‫על ספר לרצון‬
18
Christian naturalists were also interested in finding “true balsam,” both the biblical pro-
duct and the medicament known to Dioscorides. See Richard Palmer, “Medical Botany in
Northern Italy in the Renaissance,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 78:2 (February
1985): 149–57, 152.
and differences between various sap-producing trees. While describing

one particular type of tree that yields sap when tapped, Portaleone states
that the rabbis, owing to their lack of familiarity with Greek, misidenti-
fied the tree. Regarding trees that release sap, Portaleone informs his
readers that
the choicest tree among them is called xilobalsamo (xilon in Greek means
“tree” – and not aqsil19 – as they wrote in our sacred books). Those men
did not know the particulars of that language [Greek], and they wrote this
Greek word not with the letters that are read in their [the Greeks’] lan-
guage (kappa or chi and sigma) but rather with the letter that was familiar
to them, xi, which is the fourteenth letter in their alphabet. That fine wood
is fresh, reddish, and fragrant, since its aroma resembles its sap, and fur-
thermore its wood and branches are thin.20
Portaleone’s most trenchant condemnation here is that the rabbis, more

accustomed to the sound of the letter xi (presumably because of its pho-
netic proximity to the Hebrew letter khaf) misread a word where the
actual spelling called for a different letter entirely. For Portaleone, basic
familiarity with Greek is a prerequisite for botanical – and also rabbinic –
research. Knowledge of that language provides a clear point of demar-
cation between Talmudic learning and medieval expositors. Referring to
the rabbis of the Talmud, Portaleone wrote: “With my heart I decided
to remind you that our rabbis, of blessed memory, also used Greek, and
desired the beauty of Japheth to dwell periodically in the tents of Shem.
As such, I came across many Greek words in my books since our sages,
of blessed memory, spoke them.”21 The poverty of many medieval rabbis’
19
‫אקסיל‬, paired with ‫אלואון‬, is used in the Targum to Psalm 45:9. Together they mean “pieces of
bitter aloe wood.” The Targum is translating ‫אהלות‬, the very term that exercised Lusitanus in
his commentary on Dioscorides’ De materia medica.
20
SG, 81b: ‫ואולם העץ המובחר ממנו הנקרא גסילובאלסאמו (גסילון בלשון יון רוצה לומר עץ לא אקסיל כמו שכתבו‬
‫בספרינו הקדושים האנשים ההם שלא ידעו בטיב הלשון ההוא וכותבין המלה הזאת היונית לא אם האותיות שקוראין‬
‫בלשונם קאפה או כי וסיגמה אלא עם האות הנקראת אצלם גסי שהיא האות הארבעה עשר מהאלפא ביתא שלהם) העץ‬
‫ההוא הטוב הוא הרטוב האדום והמבושם שיהיה ריחו דומה לשרף שלו ושיהיו עציו וענפיו דקים‬
21
SG, 4r: ‫עם לבבי אמרתי להזכיר לכם כי רבותינו ז"ל נשתמשו גם הם בלשון יוני ונתרצו שיפיפותו של יפת ישכון‬
‫ ועל כי נזדמנו לי בחבורי מלות רבות בלשון יון שדברו בם חכמינו ז"ל‬.‫ לפעמים באהלי שם‬Further evidence
of Portaleone’s knowledge of Greek abounds in his unpublished medical consilia. See, for
example, Abrahami Portaleonis Medici Mantuani hebrei responsorum et consultationum
medicinalium liber, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. Latin 13004, “Consilium excellen-
tissimi patris de histerica passione pro mulieri hebraea. Excellentissimo Legum Artiumque
Doctori D. Abrahae Provinciali Hebreo,” 293r–298v, esp. 293v. For a discussion of Jewish
knowledge of Greek is a complaint that Portaleone reiterates time and

again in his work on incense and is a basic criterion he uses for assessing
botanical competence.
Another example that illustrates this is Portaleone’s censure of a
group of Jewish sages who fail to identify the spice qetzi’ah (cassia).
He states that with regard to “the definition of this spice we cannot
establish its true nature from the remarks of the commentators. In his
commentary on the Torah (Exodus 30:23), Rashi, of blessed memory,
writes that qidah is an herbal root that the sages refer to as qetzi’ah.”22
For Portaleone, this sort of tautological identification of a spice is insuf-
ficient: since there is no referent beyond scriptural terminology, there
is no way to establish the true nature of the element. After reviewing
the identifications proposed by Abravanel, Radak, and Saadiah Gaon
and pronouncing them inaccurate, Portaleone turns his attention to the
author of the Arukh23 and questions his identification of qetzi’ah with
the Greek spice cassia. This time the issue is not the Arukh’s lack of
Greek vocabulary but his unreliable classificatory memory. Portaleone
gently points out that “here, in my humble opinion, both the author of
the Arukh and the Latin translator did not arrive at the true meaning of
qezi’ah since qillufah [another of the spices in the incense] is indeed cas-
sia. How could one spice be included in the incense as two different spe-
cies?”24 Portaleone similarly censures Nah￷manides for suggesting that
knowledge of Greek in the Renaissance, see Moses A. Shulvass, “The Knowledge of Antiquity
among the Italian Jews of the Renaissance,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish
Research 18 (1948–9): 291–300.
22
SG, 87v: ‫ובפירוש הסם הזה לא יכלנו לעמוד על אמתת מהותו מדברי המפרשים כי רש"י ז"ל בפירוש התורה כתב‬
‫ קידה היא שרש עשב בלשון חכמים קציעה‬See also Appendix I.
23
Portaleone refers to Nathan ben Yeh￷iel, who lived in Rome in the eleventh century. A 1555
edition of the Arukh was edited by Portaleone’s fellow Mantuan Moses Provenzali. On
the latter, see Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (Jerusalem:
Kiryath Sepher, 1977), 729–30; and Robert Bonfil, “I responsi rabbinici come fonte storica,”
Materia Giudaica 9:1–2 (2004): 103–8.
24
SG, 87v: ‫והנה גם בעל הערוך והמתרגמן לאטינו לעניות דעתי לא באו על אמתת משמעות הקציעה כי הקלופה‬
‫ היא הקאסיאה ואיך יכנס בקטרת שני פעמים גם יחד סם אחד‬Arukh (Pesaro: Soncino, 1517), 150a; see
also Arukh (Venice: Bragadin, 1552), 142v. As was the custom among Italian Jews of the
Renaissance, Portaleone uses the phrase “Latin translator” to refer to Jerome’s translation
of the Bible, commonly known as the Vulgate. For example, Abraham Farissol uses a nearly
identical expression in his critical essay on the Vulgate; see his Magen Avraham, chap. 29. In
the Vulgate, Exodus 30:24 reads “cassiae autem quingentos siclos in pondere sanctuarii olei
de olivetis mensuram hin”; qidah is translated by Jerome as cassia, a rendering that persists
in modern translations and may be found in the Jewish Publication Society’s translation of
the same verse.
since qetzi’ah is written in the plural (qetzi’ot) in Psalms 45:9, as are

several other spices grouped in the category of qosht, it must mean that
a double portion of spices in the group qosht is to be included in the final
mixture. After responding that such a gloss lacks any textual support,
Portaleone demurs and notes “nevertheless the Torah only commands
that we take the choicest of each species; why would the Torah differ-
entiate between qosht and the other spices?”25 In the end Portaleone,
left with no good options, has to guess. His recourse, not surprisingly, is
to Greek: “Therefore my heart tells me that qetzi’ah is the spice called
agollochon or xyloaloe in Greek. It is a very fragrant spice – there is
none better than it among the other spices in the incense.”26
One rabbi on whom Portaleone does consistently rely is Simeon ben
Gamliel. In his chapter on tzori, or myrrh, Portaleone notes that the rab-
bis misidentified the spice. However, he reminds his readers that Simeon
ben Gamliel, the second-century C E Palestinian rabbi, proposed the cor-
rect interpretation but that his views were rejected by other rabbis.27
After reviewing ancient scientific work on myrrh and concluding that
all scholars besides Theophrastus concur that myrrh is sap, rather than
a fruit or a tree, Portaleone reflects that “one must therefore be mystified
as to why our rabbi [Maimonides], of blessed memory, did not decide
in favor of Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel, who said that ‘tzori is nothing
but sap that drips from balsam trees.’”28 Portaleone goes on to relate
how in the Babylonian Talmud’s discussion of tzori, the rabbis ruled
that the spice was originally taken from the tree itself and not from its
sap. The import of this analysis is clear: Simeon ben Gamliel was, know-
ingly or not, in agreement with most ancient Greek and Roman scholars
about the olfactory properties of the balsam tree and the proper part of
the tree from which to extract its essential odor. Other Talmudic rabbis
could not match their colleague’s botanical expertise. At the chapter’s
25
SG, 88r: ‫ועם כל זה התורה לא צותה אלא שנקח המובחר שבמיניהם ולמה תשים התורה הפרש בין הקושט ובין שאר‬
‫הסממנים‬
26
SG, 88r: ‫ והוא סם ריחני מאד אין‬.‫על כן לבי אומר לי כי הקציעה היא הסם הנקרא בלשון יון אגאלוקון או גסילאלואי‬
‫הקטרת‬ ‫טוב ממנו בכל שאר סממני‬
27
See BT Keritot 6a.
28
SG, 83r: ‫על כן יש לתמוה עד מאד על רבינו ז"ל מדוע לא פסק כרבן שמעון בן גמליאל דאמר הצרי אינו אלא שרף‬
‫ הנוטף מעצי הקטף‬Portaleone is referring to Maimonides, Hilh￵ot Kelei HaMiqdash 2:4, where
he suggests that tzori means the balsam tree itself and not its sap. Maimonides’ opinion and
Simeon ben Gamliel’s gloss are discussed in Nah￷manides’ commentary to Exodus 30:34.
conclusion, Portaleone defends his allegiance to Simeon ben Gamliel.

Portaleone writes, “I have not deviated from his exact intention in this
matter, heaven forbid, because of what the gentile sages wrote. Instead,
I have relied exclusively upon the exceedingly awesome and divine man,
Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel.”29 Simeon ben Gamliel, known to have had
complete command of Greek, was famed as a natural scientist and lead-
ing member of the Sanhedrin, or rabbinic council of seventy that adju-
dicated Jewish disputes in first- and second-century Palestine, and his
scholarship was highly valued by Portaleone.30
It is indicative of Portaleone’s intellectual disposition that, as he moves
forward in his chapters on incense, he mentions the rabbis less and
less, preferring to structure his comments around ancient and medieval
medical writings and contemporary botanical works. The rabbis do not
fade from view entirely, but they play a conspicuously more minor role
in later chapters. By my count there are twelve mentions of rabbinic
literature in chapter 78, including Talmudic and Midrashic passages,
against the same number of citations in chapter 88, which is more than
twice as long. One explanation for this may simply be Portaleone’s dis-
cursive style.31 As topics veer farther and farther from his stated pur-
pose, it makes sense that he would lose track of foundational Jewish
texts. Another possibility may be that Portaleone felt there was little
relevant in rabbinic writings as his discussion proceeded. Whereas ear-
lier chapters dealt with the four types of spice explicitly mentioned in
the Pentateuch (stacte, onycha, galbanum, and frankincense), the lat-
ter chapters identify and describe the remaining eleven that are never
specified in the Bible. As Portaleone is forced to depart from canonical
Jewish texts, it makes sense that he would look for information from
other sources.
29
SG, 83v: ‫שלא נטיתי מכונתו זאת ח"ו בעבור מה שכתבו המחברים שלא מבני עמנו אלא על איש האלהים נורא מאד‬
‫רבן שמעון בן גמליאל בלבד נשענתי‬
30
Talmudic literature testifies to Simeon ben Gamliel’s Hellenic qualifications and his bota-
nical expertise. He is reputed to have said that the Torah may be correctly translated only
into Greek (see Jerusalem Talmud Megillah 1:9). For examples attesting to his proficiency in
natural sciences, see BT Pesah￷im 53a, where he differentiates various species of fruit-bearing
trees.
31
Peter Miller has recently flagged this aspect of Shiltei HaGibborim. See his “Lost and
Found,” 504, where he observes that, “like all good early modern encyclopedists, Portaleone
is prone to digression.”
Geography and Greek
Of all the fields of knowledge in which Portaleone was well versed, two
were conspicuously helpful to him in his efforts to identify the elements of
biblical incense: Greek philology and classical geography. In the seventy-
eighth chapter of Shiltei HaGibborim, Portaleone identifies the element
tzori (balsam).32 After a few brief quotations from Talmudic literature,
Portaleone reviews the comments of non-Jewish authorities, including
Dioscorides, Galen, Avicenna, and Theophrastus, before turning to post-
classical rabbinic literature to evaluate Jewish knowledge of the balsam
plant. Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) is his first object of scorn.33 The fif-
teenth-century statesman and sage, in his commentary on Exodus, cites
Rashi, who remarks that nataf (stacte) is balsam (tzori) and then goes
on to state that “[the sap] drips from balsam trees. In the vernacular it is
referred to as gomma.”34 Displeased with this gloss, Portaleone writes: “I
am bewildered that he, who was an expert in the vernacular and in Latin,
did not see that Rashi, of blessed memory, was not an expert in these lan-
guages. [Rashi] defined a specific spice with a general term for all resins
that come from sap. For any kind of spice that derives from sap is called
gomma in the vernacular.”35 Portaleone’s criticism of Abravanel is based
on the fact that the latter failed to highlight the inadequacy of Rashi’s
knowledge of Romance languages and, by extension, accurate botanical
nomenclature. Abravanel, however, quickly moves beyond Rashi’s gloss
and defines balsam as mastix. Portaleone protests, insisting that
what this sage said – “the correct [interpretation] is that it is mastix” –

is also not true. For the lentisco [tree] that produces good mastix exists
only on one of the Greek islands, called Chios in their language. In fact,
this tree does grow in other places besides this one island. Furthermore, in
32
SG, 83r.
33
The literature on Abravanel is formidable. Benzion Netanyahu’s Don Isaac Abravanel,
Statesman and Philosopher (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1953)
remains a good introduction. More recently, see Eric Lawee, Isaac Abravanel’s Stance
towards Tradition: Defense, Dissent and Dialogue (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001) and
the essays collected by Menahem Kellner and Abraham Melamed in Jewish History 23:3
(September 2009).
34
Rashi on Exodus 30:34, quoted in SG, 83r: ‫גומא‬ ‫והוא נוטף מעצי הקטף ובלעז קורין אותו‬
35
SG, 83r: ‫ותמה אני מאד ממנו שהיה בקי בלשון לועז ולאטינו ולא ראה שרש"י ז"ל שלא היה בקי בלשונות האלה פירש‬
‫לעז‬ ‫שם סם אחד פרטי בשם אחד כולל לכל השרפים כי כל שרף יהיה מה שיהיה יקרא גומי בלשון‬
the Land of Israel the lentisco does not produce ideal mastix like it does
on Chios. Therefore one cannot consider it among the “best fruits of the
land,” since our holy patriarch said “take of the best fruits of the land”
(Genesis 43:11).36
Portaleone argues against Abravanel with a combination of superior

botanical knowledge, geographic expertise, and scriptural sensitiv-
ity. The only specific criticism Portaleone articulates is that Abravanel
should have had a better sense about the character of balsam because
of his familiarity with Romance languages. Clearly, however, more is at
stake here for Portaleone. His geographic knowledge, culled from Pliny
and Strabo, and his botanical knowledge, gathered from Dioscorides
and Theophrastus, put him at an advantage over Abravanel. Portaleone’s
medical education, which exposed him to works by all four of these
ancient writers, positioned him to understand ancient incense in a more
nuanced manner than Abravanel.37 Finally, Portaleone would have
had plenty of opportunities to see and handle various types of balsam.
Attaining firsthand, practical knowledge of plants was praised in six-
teenth-century botany. For example, Prospero Alpino, one of Portaleone’s
contemporaries, states in his work on balsam that it was “imported into
many places in Italy” from Egypt and Syria but that “our physicians
refuse to acknowledge it.”38
36
Ibid., 83r: ‫ואינו גם כן נכון מה שאמר החכם הזה “והנכון שהוא מסטיצי” כי הלינטיסקו היוצא ממנו המסטיצי הטוב‬
‫הוא בלבד באי אחת מהיונים הנקראת בלשונם קיאו עם כי האילן הזה הוא גדל גם כן במקומות אחרים חוץ מהאי הזאת‬
‫וגם בארץ ישראל הלינטיסקו לא יעשה המאסטיקו השלם כמו בקיאו ולא יקרא אם כן מזמרת הארץ כמו שאמר אבינו‬
‫הקודש "קחו מזמרת הארץ" אלא זמרת הארץ היתה באמת הבאלסאמו כי לא היה ממנו אז במקום אחר כי אם בארץ‬
‫ ישראל בלבד‬The verse from Genesis (43:11), which Portaleone does not cite in full, reads “And
their father Israel said to them, ‘if it must be so now, do this: take of the best fruits in the
land in your utensils, and carry down a present to the man, a little balm, and a little honey,
spices, and myrrh, nuts and almonds.’” Jewish Publication Society translation.
37
For more on sixteenth-century medical education, see Richard J. Durling, “Girolamo
Mercuriale’s de modo studendi,” Osiris, 2nd ser., 6 (1990): 181–95.
38
Prospero Alpino (b. 1553) was a Venetian physician, student of Melchior Guilandinus (see
Chapter 2), and scholar of Near Eastern botany. This quotation is from his De balsamo
dialogus, bound with De plantis Aegypti liber (Venice: apud Franciscum de Franciscis
Senensem, 1592), 60r: “cum et si in multa Italiae loca ex Aegypto, ac Syria huiusce plan-
tae succus, fructus, lignaque; nunc vere comportentur, haec tamen agnoscere nostri medici
renuant.” On Alpino, see Giuseppe Ongaro, “Contributi alla biografia di Prospero Alpini,”
Acta medicae historiae patavina 8–9 (1961–2/1962–3): 79–168; Nancy Siraisi, “In Search
of the Origins of Medicine: Egyptian Wisdom and Some Renaissance Physicians,” in Valeria
Finucci and Kevin Brownlee, eds., Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction
in Literature and History from Antiquity through Early Modern Europe (Durham, NC:
One chapter in Shiltei HaGibborim puzzles out the identification of

shechelet, an element in the incense mixture made from the operculum,
or closing flap, of snails.39 The chapter provides an opportunity for
Portaleone to censure Abravanel yet again. The thrust of Portaleone’s
criticism in this chapter is not so much that rabbis misidentified a com-
ponent of incense but that they incompletely identified it, supplying only
a Hebrew equivalent and neglecting to explore its scientific identity.
Commiserating with his coreligionists by admitting that the identifica-
tion of shechelet is exceedingly difficult, Portaleone concedes that he
“had not seen in any of the commentaries one who wrote precisely what
it [shechelet] is, other than as one who trifles.”40 Abravanel, at least, tried
to equate the substance with a botanical term, remarking that “in the
Roman language it is called byzanzio.”41 In his commentary on Exodus
(30:34), Abravanel stops there and does not supplement his identifica-
tion with any form of analysis; but Portaleone goes on to describe the
origins of that name and the maritime context for the growth of byz-
anzion. Portaleone also remarks that in Greek this organism is called
blatta, which has two meanings, both of which escaped Abravanel.42
Not surprisingly, Abravanel, along with his rabbinic interlocutors, is
found to be wanting in both geographic knowledge and botanical exper-
tise. Indeed, the chapter includes Portaleone’s criticism of several other
rabbis’ failure to accurately identify shechelet. For example, he derides
Nah￷manides’ view that shechelet should be identified with tzipporen,
which, although potentially true, is an unsatisfactory interpretation.43 “I
am surprised,” writes Portaleone, that Nah￷manides, “who was a great
scholar of Torah and also a scholar of non-Jewish sciences, and fluent
in Arabic, revealed a tiny bit and concealed so much more, especially
Duke University Press, 2001), 235–61, 237 n. 3; Nancy Siraisi, History, Medicine and the
Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007),
344–5, n. 33.
39
For shechelet in classical Jewish sources, see BT Keritot 6b.
40
SG, 83v: ‫והנה קשה לי מאד כי לא ראיתי במפרשים מי שכתב בפירוש מה היא אלא כמתעתע‬
41
SG, 83v: ‫בלשון רומי ביזאנציאו‬
42
In Latin, Portaleone informs us, blatta means a creature that chews through garments –
i.e., a moth – and in Greek it refers to a creature of the sea otherwise known as porpora.
SG, 83v.
43
Standard dictionaries of biblical and rabbinic Hebrew equate these two terms as well. See
Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the
Midrashic Literature, 2 vols. in 1 (New York, 1996), s.v. ‫שחלת‬, p. 1548.
since he had read what our rabbi [Maimonides] wrote on this issue.”44
Maimonides, Portaleone goes on to explain, completely identified and
described the nature of tzipporen, while Nah￷manides was content to
stop short of fuller description. After giving the Arabic equivalent of
shechelet originally cited in Maimonides, Portaleone proposes that in
Greek it might be onyx euodes, or possibly blatta, as the medieval phy-
sician Paul of Aegina suggested.45 Appropriately, the chapter concludes
with yet another slight on Abravanel, one that underscores his lack of
Greek. “There are those among the Greeks,” Portaleone writes, “who
call it blatta byzanzion in order to clarify that it is not porpora. This,
as I have noted, is perhaps what Don Abravanel, of blessed memory,
wished to say, but omitted.”46 Portaleone’s tone here is ironic: point-
ing out Abravanel’s omission, while accompanying his name with not
one but two honorifics, is a way of emphasizing the inadequacy of his
remarks on shechelet.
Abravanel is by no means the only Jewish sage whom Portaleone
ridicules for attempting serious botanical research without knowledge
of Greek. The Mantuan physician excoriates the author of the Arukh
for mangling a Greek word and confusing two plants: “The author
of the Arukh, of blessed memory, wrote ‘mor . . . in Greek is mosco.’
Until this day I have never known that the scented mosco is so-called in
Greek.”47 Portaleone proceeds to note that byron is something that looks
like white wool and has a sweet smell; on the tree the Greeks call this
peuke, and in Latin it is called picea, in Arabic artz. Once again, owing
44
SG, 83v: ‫ותמה אני עליו שהיה חכם גדול בתורה וגם היה חכם בחכמות החצוניות וידע בשלמות הלשון ערבי למה‬
‫ גלה טפח וכסה טפחיים בפרט אחרי שקרא מה שכתב רבינו בו‬See Nah￷manides to Exodus 30:34 and
Maimonides, Perush al Masechet Ohalot 3:3; Maimonides, Hilh￵ot Kelei Bet HaMiqdash
2:1, 2, 4.
45
I have not been able to ascertain Portaleone’s source. Pauli Aeginetae opus de re medica
(Paris: apud Simonem Colinaeum, 1532), contains no mention of onyx euodes. Book 7,
p. 50, discusses “onyches, conchulae indicae,” a type of mollusc Portaleone may have had in
mind: “Onyches conchyliorum Indicorum opercula sunt, quae suffitu strangulatione vulua-
rum concidentes foeminas excitant, item comitialeis: potae aluum turbant.” Paul of Aegina’s
discussion of blatta concerns insects that are found in mills, rather than sea creatures. See
ibid., book 7, p. 59.
46
SG, 83v: ‫יש מהיונים שקוראים אותה בלאטה ביזאנציאון לפרש שאינה הפורפורא והוא מה שבאולי רצה והשמיט השר‬
‫אמרתי‬ ‫אברבאנילו ז"ל כאשר‬
47
SG, 86r: ‫ ואני עד היום לא ידעתי שהמוסקו‬.‫ מור וקציעה מור ואהלות בלשון יון מוסקו‬. . . ‫ובעל הערוך ז"ל כתב‬
‫ הריחני יקרא כן בלשון יון‬See Arukh (Pesaro: Soncino, 1517), 93v. See also Arukh (Venice:
Bragadin, 1552), 94r–95v.
to his refined botanical knowledge, as well as his greater familiarity with

Greek, Portaleone demonstrates his advantage over his rabbinic pre-
decessors. Castigating not only Abravanel but also other postclassical
rabbis, Portaleone exclaims, “It completely escapes me why they did not
seek to know the truth of this matter from King Solomon, may peace
be upon him.”48 Portaleone goes on to quote the book of Kings, where
the Queen of Sheba is reported to have brought mor and other spices
to King Solomon “from her own land,” and also the Song of Songs, in
which King Solomon, the supposed author of Song of Songs, states, “I
shall go to the mountain of myrrh.”49 Portaleone describes how King
Solomon learned to grow myrrh from the Queen of Sheba, and raised it
on mountaintops, or at least on high mountain plains. An avid reader of
Mattioli’s commentary on Dioscorides’ De materia medica, Portaleone
read passages in which Mattioli cited Pliny (Natural History 12:15) dis-
cussing myrrh’s origin among the Sabeans, a people known for cultivat-
ing myrrh and frankincense,50 and whom Renaissance readers identified
as the Queen of Sheba’s subjects. Additionally, Portaleone was familiar
with Theophrastus’s discourse on myrrh (De plantarum historia 9:4),
also quoted at length by Mattioli, which speaks of myrrh growing on
high, snowy mountains.51 Portaleone never proves the identification of
mor as myrrh on precise philological or botanical grounds; he simply
assumes its identification and uses classical literature to confirm cryptic
statements in the Bible regarding myrrh’s provenance.
Portaleone does not deviate from rabbinic teachings in a casual man-
ner. On the contrary, when he disagrees with his rabbinic forbears, a
sense of regret and even despair is palpable in his writing. Often, before
he launches into an explanation at odds with rabbinic tradition, he strug-
gles to come to terms with the theological implications of his words.
For example, Portaleone begins a chapter on kefat ha-Yarden (Jordan
48
SG, 86v: ‫ע"ה‬ ‫כי נעלם ממני איך לא בקשו לדעת אמתות הדבר הזה משלמה המלך‬
49
Song of Songs 4:6.
50
Pliny, Natural History 12:32, quoted in Mattioli, Opera quae extant omnia (Frankfurt: ex
officina typographica N. Bassaei, 1598), book I, chap. 67, p. 88: “convehitur et ex sylvis
laudata, petuntque eam etiam à Troglodytis Sabaei transitu maris.”
51
Ibid., 88: “Gignitur thus et myrrha regione Arabum media circa Saba . . . et exeunt thuris,
myrrhaeque arbores aliae super montem, aliae in pede montis culturis propriis quamobrem
aliae coluntur, aliae vitam agunt incultae. Montem istum praealtum affirmant, et ningi
solitum.”
amber) by lamenting the fact that Jewish sages have not contributed
more to identifying Jordan amber:
We shall pursue, if we are able, the scholars of our generation in order to

learn from them the identity of kefat ha-Yarden, which is included in the
incense. For this matter is exceedingly difficult for me, and I am not embar-
rassed to reveal my shame. Walking and wandering for many days now in
the field of foolishness and confusion I do not know where I will turn for
help. I found no water to quench my thirst, and my tongue cleaved to my
cheek (Psalm 137:6). I have no words with which to convey to you even
a clear hint (Job 26:14) of what I have heard when I ponder the matter
within me. My heart is dismayed (Psalm 143:4) when I realize that my
mind is ill at ease and cannot grasp what the great minds of the ages have
written, such as Rashi, the author of the Arukh, Kolbo, and all the rest of
them, of blessed memory. And I have not come, heaven forbid, to oppose
my masters, for I will always seek Torah from their mouths, and if there is
an oral tradition, I shall cheerfully accept all of its particulars, as is oblig-
atory for anyone designated an Israelite. However, should permission be
granted to refute at times the words of the sages, such that truth might
emanate from disagreement, I will speak up (Job 32:17), and perhaps from
within my foolishness their wisdom will shine like the light of the sun.52
Clearly, Portaleone has reservations about overturning the rulings of the

sages. Just the same, he is confident that one result of his efforts will be
the glorification and confirmation of their words. In his discomfort with
correcting ancient scholars, Portaleone had partners in the world of six-
teenth-century European botany. Giovanni Odorico Melchiori, in a lau-
datory letter published at the beginning of a 1568 edition of Mattioli’s
commentary on Dioscorides, describes the act of correcting the ancients
as a “paradox,” musing that “there are quite a few who say that it is
something of a paradox for one to wish to go against the opinions of
our ancient scholars. The common opinion, which you express, holds
52
SG, 92v: ‫ונרדפה אחרי חכמי דורנו לדעת מהם אם נוכל מה היא כפת הירדן הבאה בקטרת כי הנה קשה עלי מאד הדבר‬
‫הזה ולא אבוש לגלות את חרפתי כי הנני הולך ותועה זה ימים רבים בשדה הסכלות והמבוכה ולא ידעתי אנה אפנה לעזרה‬
‫כי לא מצאתי מים לרוות את צמאי דבקה לשוני לחכי ואין מלה בלשוני להגיד לכם שמץ דבר ברור ששמעתי בהגם בתוכי‬
‫ישתומם לבי בזכרי כי אין דעתי מתישבת עלי לעמוד במה שכתבו גאוני עולם עליה כמו שהם רש"י בעל הערוך והכל בו‬
‫ ואני לא באתי ח"ו לחלוק על רבותי כי תורה לעולם אבקש מפיהם ואם קבלה היא אקבל כל דבריה בסבר‬.‫וזולתם ז"ל‬
‫ אמנם אם הרשות נתונה להשיב לפעמים על דברי חכמים עד שמתוך‬.‫פנים יפות כמוטל על כל אשר בשם ישראל יכונה‬
‫הויכוח יתברר האמת אענה אף אני חלקי ואולי מתוך סכלותי כאור שמש יזרח חכמתם‬
that some of the basic and most important simples of the pharmacists,
such as acoro, cinnamon, and aromatic calamo, and others besides these
are not the true ones.”53 Melchiori’s remarks illuminate the anxiety felt
by some early modern botanists who deigned to correct the words of
ancient authorities. At the same time, they indicate the broad diffusion
of Portaleone’s ideas and signal the professional culture that helped
generate them.
Criticism of Ancient Greek and Latin Sources

Closely related to Portaleone’s departure from rabbinic texts is his grad-
ual disengagement from ancient Greek botanical literature. That dis-
engagement from ancient botanical sources is, I suggest, rooted in the
practice of sixteenth-century natural philosophy. Finding fault with and
subsequently emending ancient scientific works was common practice
in the second half of the sixteenth century.54 As Portaleone’s work com-
mences, Dioscorides and, to a lesser extent, Theophrastus are cited as
the ultimate arbiters of botanical accuracy. However, as the chapters
proceed, Portaleone favors the accounts of Spanish and Portuguese trav-
elers, local spice dealers, and pharmacists in Mantua, as well as his own
experience. In the end, ancient and medieval sources of all kinds – Greek,
Roman, and Jewish – take a backseat to contemporary works on phar-
macology, medicine, and natural history. Portaleone’s work may lend
credence to an established trend in historical scholarship, that the dis-
covery and study of the New World did in fact do much to displace the
authority of ancient texts.55
53
Giovanni Odorico Melchiori, dedicatory letter “allo eccellentissimo dottore M. Pietro
Andrea Matthioli medico sanese, mio signore,” in Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi di
M. Pietro Andrea Mattioli nelli sei libri di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo della Materia
Medicinale (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1568), sig. ***3v- sig. ***4r at sig. ***4r: “nè man-
cano alcuni di dire, che sia quasi un paradosso il voler tenere contra l’opinione de’ nostri
vecchi e il commune uso, come fate voi, che alcuni de’ primi e più importanti semplici delle
speciarie, come l’Acoro, il Cinnamomo, il Calamo aromatico e altri, non sieno i veri.” Dated
“di Padova alli xx. di Ottobre, 1549.”
54
See Ogilvie, The Science of Describing, esp. 49–51.
55
John Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970). Cf. Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and
the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992).
One characteristic of Portaleone’s censure of scientific texts from

antiquity is his insistence that one ancient commentator rarely pro-
vides a complete description of any plant. On the topic of Dioscorides’
description of myrrh, Portaleone states that, “since Dioscorides left
out matters relevant to us about myrrh, it is important that we seek
additional details. In this chapter I will translate for you what Pliny
and Theophrastus said about myrrh.” To mitigate the impact of rely-
ing so heavily on gentile commentators, Portaleone tells his read-
ers to “learn from the words of these men who speak truthfully that
King Solomon, may peace be upon him, knew quite well the identity
of myrrh and its provenance many hundreds of years before them
[Pliny and Theophrastus].”56 The proof that Portaleone adduces is the
familiar verse from Song of Songs: “I will go up to the mountain of
myrrh.” Compared to Dioscorides’, Pliny’s, and Theophrastus’s detailed
descriptions of this spice, Solomon’s simple geographic observation is
much less helpful for identifying the plant. Although Portaleone does
explain the significance of Solomon’s identification of myrrh as a plant
that grows in high altitudes, next to Dioscorides’ and Theophrastus’s
descriptions of myrrh, this praise of Solomon reads like a conciliatory
gesture directed at his more traditionally minded coreligionists. Even
so, several of Portaleone’s peers in the sixteenth century praise King
Solomon’s botanical expertise while leaving out the specificities of his
achievements; Caspar Bauhin, for example, does the same. In the first
dedicatory epistle that opens the 1598 Latin version of Mattioli’s work
on Dioscorides, Bauhin writes to the Holy Roman emperor, to whom
the book is dedicated:
O Most Illustrious and Merciful Lord: among so many and so great a

number [of tales], remarkable is this tale of Solomon, wisest of kings,
namely, that, as part of the affairs of his rule, he desired to write a com-
plete account of all plants, from the cedars of Lebanon to the Hyssop of
the walls [of Jerusalem] so that he might proclaim the wisdom of the best
56
SG, 87r: ‫ומדברי האנשים האלו המשיחים לפי תומם תלמדו ששלמה המלך ע"ה מאות רבות בשנים קודם להם‬
‫ ידע על נכון מה הוא המור ומקומו‬On Jewish apologetics in the Renaissance, see Arthur Lesley,
“Il richiamo agli ‘antichi.’” See also Lesley, “Jewish Adaptation of Humanist Concepts
in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in Maryanne Cline Horowitz et al., eds.,
Renaissance Rereadings: Intertext and Context (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988),
51–66.
and greatest God. This history was destroyed (alas, we long for it) to the
great detriment of humanity.57
Solomon’s scientific prowess enchanted both Christian and Jewish schol-

ars of Portaleone’s time.
Perhaps the most trenchant and consistent of Portaleone’s criticisms
of the ancients is that, as opposed to traveling widely in order to dis-
cover and describe plants, they preferred to work from limited samples
at their convenient disposal. In a section in which he praises the energetic
efforts of various modern explorers and roving botanists, Portaleone
remarks that they “walked and wandered to nearly all corners of the
earth and saw what the ancients, sitting at ease in their tents, hastily
recording their own hallucinations and vanities (Ecclesiastes 5:6), did
not see.”58 This remark indicates Portaleone’s preference for experience
over convenience, travel over armchair antiquarianism, empiricism over
speculation.59
According to Portaleone, sedentary scholarship engenders derivative
scholarship. He complained that “all the ancient authors spoke at length
about this spice, and they rambled on about qinnamon as a separate
spice. All of the scholars copied repeatedly from one another – all lies!
Each [copied] from his fellow [scholar] like a dog returning to its vomit
(Proverbs 26:11).”60 The origin of the misinformation, according to
Portaleone, was Dioscorides, who identified the best type of qinnamon
57
Mattioli, Opera quae extant omnia (Frankfurt: ex officina typographica N. Bassaei, 1598),
unnumbered pages just before sig *2r: “memorabile est Illustrissime ac Clementissime Dux,
regum illud sapientissimi Salomonis exemplum quod is inter tot tantaque imperii sui nego-
tia, omnium Plantarum, quo Dei Opt. Max. sapientiam admirandam praedicaret, a Cedro
inquam Libani usque ad Hyssosium murorum, Historiam texere voluerit, quae (heu optata!)
non sine magno mortalium damno interiit.”
58
SG, 89v: ‫אשר הלכו ושטו כמעט בכל חלקי העולם וראו מה שלא ראו הקדמונים היושבים תחת אהליהם במנוחה‬
‫בחפזה‬ ‫וכותבים חלומות והבלים‬
59
On the increasing emphasis upon empiricism in sixteenth-century intellectual life, see
the essays collected in Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi, eds., Historia: Empiricism
and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). See also
Alessandro Guetta, “Can Fundamentalism Be Modern? The Case of Avraham Portaleone
(1542–1612),” in David N. Myers et al., eds., Acculturation and Its Discontents: The Italian
Jewish Experience between Exclusion and Integration (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2008), 99–115, where he points to two passages in Portaleone’s De auro dialoghi tres
(Venice: apud Io. Baptistam à Porta, 1584), 20, 140, that display the Mantuan physician’s
devotion to empiricism.
60
SG, 89v: ‫וממנה דברו כל המחברים הקדמונים בארוכה והרבו דברים על הקנמון כמו סם נפרד ממנה והעתיקו זה מזה‬
‫קיאו‬ ‫ושבו כלם על דברי כזב ושקר האחד על חבירו ככלב שב על‬
as mosilitico. Among those who copied Dioscorides were Serapion “the

Arab,” Theophrastus, Galen, Strabo, and Avicenna. Portaleone has
choice words for this group: “These worthless and reckless men (Judges
9:4) devised [much] in their own hearts (1 Kings 12:33), and all of them
failed to see the light of truth. For they walked in such darkness that I am
embarrassed and ashamed even to copy down their words – complete
drivel. They are bereft of understanding (Obadiah 1:7).”61 Portaleone’s
unusually strong denunciation of these authors, all of whom were
respected medical authorities in the sixteenth century, and all of whom
were taught in the standard medical curricula at Padua and other Italian
universities, may best be understood as a form of humanist polemic. The
physicians who “did not see the light of truth” and “walked in darkness”
were ancient and medieval authorities, some of whom had fallen out
of favor in the late sixteenth century. Immediately after castigating this
group of pagan and Muslim writers, Portaleone calls upon the work of
contemporary scholars whose practices were far more commendable in
Portaleone’s eyes. “Therefore,” Portaleone writes, “I decided to return
to the current authors62 of our time such as Clusius.”63 It is to the “new
authors” whom Portaleone relies upon that we now turn our attention.
Generally, Portaleone has only positive things to say about the con-
temporary scholars he discusses in his chapters on incense. The Spanish
and Portuguese, in particular, are praised for their wanderlust and for
their rigorous exploration of medicinal plants and herbs, and his Italian
brethren are singled out for the proficiency of their medical learning.
Portaleone’s discussion of contemporary botanical and medical discov-
eries sheds light on his relationship to modern geographic discoveries
and the importance of empiricism over book learning.
Early in Portaleone’s work on incense, in his chapter on mor (myrrh),
Portaleone informs his sons that “in recent years the Spanish have brought
61
SG, 89v: ‫ומה שבדו מלבם אנשים ריקים ופוחזים וכל האנשים האלה לא ראו אור האמת ובחשכה התהלכו עד כי‬
‫בהם‬ ‫בושתי וגם נכלמתי להעתיק דבריהם דברי הבאי אין תבונה‬
62
The expression ‫ המחברים החדשים‬is probably best understood as a Hebraicized version of
recentiores.
63
SG, 89v: ‫ לכן אמרתי לחזר אחרי המחברים החדשים שבזמננו כמו שהם הקלוסיאו‬On Clusius, see Florike
Egmond, Paul Hoftijzer, and Robert P. W. Visser, eds., Carolus Clusius: Towards a Cultural
History of a Renaissance Naturalist (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences, 2007). Besides Clusius, in these lines Portaleone mentions Francisco López de
Gómara (1510–60), André Thevet (1502–92), and others. See Miletto, Glauben und Wissen,
232–4.
from India, which is in the west [i.e., the West Indies], the sap of a c ertain
tree which they call balsam. It is noble and quite fragrant, resembling
in its features and very nearly in its form and essence the sap of fine
tzori, which existed in our Holy Land.”64 Portaleone cites a portion of
Nicolás Monardes’ testimony of this plant: “As Niccolo Monardes, the
Spaniard, wrote, [this plant] grows in the land they call ‘New Spain,’
and the Indians call this tree in their language xilo, and this tree is large,
slightly smaller than our pomegranate trees, and its leaves resemble the
leaves of the grass called in Greek galeopsis.”65 Portaleone goes on to
provide equivalent terms for this plant in Arabic, Latin, and Italian and
launches into a lengthy description of its flowers, branches, and shoots.
Portaleone quotes Monardes a second time: “Niccolo Monardes also
wrote that from the four portions of the world (these being Europe, Asia,
Africa, and America) the Spaniards have brought back to Spain a certain
resin that resembles our good tzori, and it comes from the tree in clus-
ters, and is made from shells.”66 Compared to his treatment of both rab-
binic sources and ancient Greek writings, Portaleone is rather credulous
in accepting Monardes’ reports; he does not critically evaluate them.
As much as Portaleone took from Monardes, he took even more
from Mattioli. While discussing the incense component qillufah and the
agollochon tree, from which it may derive, Portaleone remarks:
As the Portuguese attested, who traveled by ship through the high south-
ern seas (Proverbs 30:19), eastward toward the Orient, this tree grows on
an island called Taprobana, and also in some adjacent lands. Thence these
men transported to our realms whole shoots and branches, which not only
emit a pleasant and wonderful aroma when burnt, but even when merely
handled give off their fragrance and their scent.67
64
SG, 83r: ‫דעו בני כי מעט הם השנים שהספרדים הביאו מהודו שבמערב שרף עץ אחד שקורין אותו באלסאמו והוא‬
‫נכבד ומבושם מאד דומה בפעולותיו וכמעט בצורתו ועצמותו לשרף הצרי הטוב שהיה בארצנו הקדושה‬
65
Portaleone’s source was very likely Mattioli, Opera quae extant omnia I:18, which quotes
Monardes: “ex occidentali India in Hispaniam adfertur, liquor est arboris Indis Xilo dictae.”
Ibid., 62. He very well could have read Monardes directly. See the following note.
66
Nicolás Monardes (1512–88) was the coauthor with Carolus Clusius of De simplicibus
medicamentis ex occidentali India delatis, quorum in medicina usus est (Antwerp: Plantin,
1574). There were several subsequent editions. On Monardes, see José Pardo Tomás, Oviedo,
Monardes, Hernández: el tesoro natural de América: colonialismo y ciencia en el siglo XVI
(Madrid: Nivola, 2002).
67
SG, 88r: ‫והנה כאשר העידו אנשי פורטוגאלו ההולכים בספינות בלב ים הדרום קדמת ארץ המזרח העץ הזה הוא צומח‬
‫ והאנשים האלה הם אשר נושאים משם בגלילותינו גזעי‬.‫באי אחת נקראת טאפרובאנה וגם בקצת ארצות הסמוכות לה‬
This discussion of the origin and destination of the agollochon tree also
indicates Portaleone’s interest in and knowledge of Indian geography.
He notes, for example, that it is a mere three days’ journey from Seifico
to Alcomiro. Mattioli was Portaleone’s principle source for most botan-
ical data, and Portaleone assimilated much from this world-renowned
figure.68
For Portaleone, contemporary scholars helped to identify the elements
of incense more than ancient authorities did. Portaleone’s particu-
lar fondness for Garcia de Orta is a case in point; Portaleone gushes,
“Among all of these I have chosen the words of Garcia de Orta, for they
are clear to those who understand (Prov. 8:9).” For example, Portaleone
quotes de Orta extensively on the spice qinnamon.69 Portaleone shows
that Garcia proves that Cassia lignea, qinnamon, and “our” cannella are
the same spice.70 Garcia de Orta provides Portaleone’s strongest support
for the claim that the spice he knew of in his time as cassia lignea was
the same as qillufah.
Holy Pharmacology: Portaleone’s Reconstruction

of Biblical Incense
As Portaleone moves from describing elements of the incense mixture to
assembling a portion of it, his methods as well as his sources of knowl-
edge change. Having identified the ingredients of the incense mixture,
the final chapter of Portaleone’s work is more technical and practical
than the others. It specifies how to construct the anointing oil. In order
to do that, Portaleone had to employ his vast knowledge of classical and
rabbinic literature. But it was also necessary for him to seek guidance
and instruction from humbler informants. The final chapters of Shiltei
HaGibborim that address the topic of incense invoke conversations with
and lessons learned from glass makers, coopers, and spice grinders. This
dimension of Portaleone’s working method has never been explored.
‫וענפי האילן הזה שלמים כאשר הם שלא בלבד כשיודלקו יוצא הריח הטוב והמופלא מהם אלא גם במשמוש הידים עליהם‬
‫יתנו את ריחם המבושם‬
68
Miletto, Glauben und Wissen, 286.
69
Carolus Clusius and Garcia de Orta, Aromatum et simplicium aliquot medicamentorum
apud Indos nascentium historia (Antwerp: Plantin, 1567), chap. 15. De Orta’s Coloquios dos
simples e drogas was first published in Portuguese (Goa: Por Ioannes de Endem, 1563).
70
SG, 90r.
But it merits exploration, since the conspicuous presence of artisanal

knowledge in a sprawling, deeply learned work of natural philosophy
establishes connections between popular and learned practices.71 It also
clarifies the role of empirical skill in assisting Portaleone’s endeavor to
reconstruct a biblical product.
Recent scholarship has emphasized how closely connected artisans and
scholars were in early modern Europe.72 Most of this work, however, is
concerned with Northern Europe.73 Very little historiography addresses
similar realities in Southern Europe, and even less attends to northern
Italy.74 Furthermore, many studies of the relationships between schol-
ars and craftsmen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are chiefly
concerned with the question of the origins of the scientific revolution or,
at the very least, how the New Philosophy of the seventeenth century
depended on the entry of artisans into the knowledge-making process.
Portaleone’s receptiveness to nonbookish sources of learning constitutes
another side to this story, one that underscores how an Italian Jewish
physician assimilated both textual and manual learning.75
71
Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of
Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2001), 176, 208.
72
Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Deborah Harkness, Jewel House: Elizabethan
London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
73
In addition to the two works just cited, I also have in mind the early seventeenth-century
Leiden circle of physicians, pharmacists, and botanists that coalesced around Christiaen
Porret (1554–1627), described by Claudia Swan in her “Making Sense of Medical Collections
in Early Modern Holland: The Uses of Wonder,” in Pamela H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt,
eds., Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–
1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 199–213. See also Ole Peter Grell, “In
Search of True Knowledge: Ole Worm (1588–1654) and the New Philosophy,” in ibid.,
214–32, which lists the Danish physician’s modes of acquiring knowledge as “travel, books,
face-to-face discussions, correspondence, collecting rare objects, and finally empiricism and
experiment, all of them closely interrelated and interdependent.” Ibid., 215.
74
See, for example, Antonio Barrera Osorio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American
Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006).
75
Of all the studies mentioned in the previous three notes, only Grell’s is especially concerned
with a physician: Ole Worm. Harkness argues for the central role vernacular learning played
in the coming of the Scientific Revolution, and William Eamon assumes that only charlatans,
empirics, or medical outsiders were devoted to experimentation and concrete proof. See his
“‘With the Rules of Life and an Enema’: Leonardo Fioravanti’s Medical Primitivism,” in
J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James, eds., Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars,
Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), 29–44.
Early modern authorities were aware of how important the manual

trades were to scholarly advancement, and several urged their readers
not to neglect manual laborers as potential sources of knowledge. Juan
Luis Vives, in his De tradendis disciplines, writes that the cultured man
“must not be ashamed to enter into the workshops and into the factor-
ies” and suggests that they ask questions of artisans, “trying to become
cognizant of the details of their work.”76 In the same vein, Andreas
Vesalius remarked in the preface to his De humani corporis fabrica that
the decline of medicine in the medieval world may be attributed to “fash-
ionable doctors despising the work of the hand.” Those doctors, accord-
ing to Vesalius, “assigned the manual treatments, which they considered
necessary for their patients, to commoners and limited themselves to
supervising.”77 Just as that neglect of manual practice damaged learned
medicine, shunning artisans in early modern Europe could hamper a
scholar’s ability to understand the world around him.
Portaleone, like other natural philosophers of his time, operated under
the Aristotelian assumption that nothing in the world ever disappears
once it has been created, so long as the world itself endures. To that
assumption he added a pious gloss by emphasizing that God is responsi-
ble for the permanence of creation: “Trees, plants, and creatures survive
for all time according to His will.” In Portaleone’s mind, the elements
that were used in the ancient incense mixture are still available for dis-
covery and use in the contemporary world.78 Some of those elements
were retrievable only in remote corners of the Middle East, while others
could be found in northern Italy’s botanical gardens. Some were even
available in Mantua’s pharmacies. Portaleone is explicit about how
76
Cited in Paolo Rossi, Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Early Modern Era, trans.
Salvator Attanasio (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 6.
77
Cited in ibid., 7. I have modified Attanasio’s translation slightly. For the Latin original,
which Rossi does not provide, see Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (Basel:
Johannes Oporinus, 1555 [1543]), sig. a2r: “Medicina eousque lacerari coeperit, quod pri-
marium eius instrumentum, manus operam in curando adhibens, ita neglectum sit, ut ad
plebeios ac disciplinis medicae arti subservientibus neutiquam instructos id quasi videatur
esse demandatum.” See also ibid., sig. a2v: “verum maxime post Gotthorum vastationem,
quando omnes scientiae, antea pulcherrime florentes utque decebat exercitae, pessum iuere,
lautiores medici primum in Italia, ad veterum Romanorum imitationem, manus operam
fastidientes, quae in aegris manu facienda ducerent, servis praescribere, ac illis tantum archi-
tectorum modo astare, coeperunt.”
78
SG, 95v: ‫כל מה שהוציאה הארץ במצות ה" בששת ימי בראשית מהאלנות והעשבים והבעלי חיים הם קיימים‬
‫תמיד‬ ‫ברצונו‬
pharmacists helped him accomplish his work, and expresses his hope
that his labor “will not be repulsive and loathsome (1 Samuel 15:9) in
your eyes, for I have written it according to the specifications of the
spice grinders.”79 Aware that he was writing about a religiously sensi-
tive topic with unlettered artisans as his guides, Portaleone had humble
hopes for his work’s reception; he merely wished that it not be “hated
and despised.”
But Portaleone’s exculpatory remarks should perhaps be taken rhetor-
ically, since pharmacists may not have been condescended to by Europe’s
learned elite.80 In fact, the role of the pharmacist in early modern culture
is still understudied.81 Unfortunately, few pharmacists left behind exten-
sive records of their collections. Some state archives in Italy – for exam-
ple, the one in Portaleone’s birthplace, Mantua – contain records for
ministries of spezzieria, or spice dealers. However, the documents pre-
served in Mantua’s state archive deal exclusively with the ruling Gonzaga
family’s orders to one or two specially appointed “spice dealers of the
duke” and tell scholars disappointingly little about the activities of other
spice dealers working for clients besides the duke.82 Even so, evidence
from the later part of the sixteenth century attests that pharmacists were
held in high esteem. Tomaso Garzoni, in his Piazza universale di tutte
le professioni del mondo (Venice, 1585), writes concerning pharmacists
that, “compared to other professions, they typically enjoy a very high
rank, whether for the honor of the art itself, bearing a certain similarity
to science . . . or for the practitioners, who maintain their reputation with
the seriousness befitting their profession.”83
79
SG, 94r: ‫ עם כל זה לא תהיה המלאכה הזאת נמבזה ונמס בעיניכם כי כתבתי אותה כפי תנאי הרקחים‬Cf. 1
Samuel 15:9.
80
Several physicians, including Guillaume Rondolet in Toulouse and Francisco Sanches in
Montpelier, lectured to pharmacists. At the University of Montpelier in the sixteenth cen-
tury, pharmacists were given a rigorous education, including thorough training in Latin. See
Jean-Pierre Bénézet, Pharmacie et médicament en Méditerranée occidentale (XIIIe–XVIe
siècles) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999), 434.
81
See, however, Bénézet’s Pharmacie et médicament.
82
See, for example, Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Magistrato ducale, busta IV: 1580–1689.
83
Tomaso Garzoni, Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, discorso LXXXIX:
“De’ speciari overo aromatari.” I quote from Paolo Cherchi and Beatrice Collina’s anno-
tated edition (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 2:1059: “fra gli altri professori ancora, tengono ordi-
nariamente un luogo assai nobile, sí per l’arte in se stessa onorevole per aver una certa
similitudine di scienza . . . sí anco per se stesso, mantenendo la riputazione loro con la gravità
condecente al lor mestieri.”
Modern scholars, unfortunately, have not been as charitable as

Garzoni. Peter Dilg has written on the role pharmacists and pharmaco-
logical systems of collecting played in shaping intellectual life in early
modern Europe, and his work is a happy exception to this trend.84 Dilg’s
scholarship ably demonstrates the centrality of pharmacology in six-
teenth- to eighteenth-century Europe. He argues that apothecaries par-
ticipated in more than just health-related sciences; they were intimately
associated with natural history collections. He also notes how doctors
and pharmacists often bonded, sometimes in learned interchange, other
times during the course of routine visits, regarding their shared interests
in zoology, mineralogy, and botany.85
In Portaleone’s time, Mantua boasted a rich tradition of pharma-
cists and botanical gardens. Filipo Costa was one of the many figures
in Portaleone’s community who was involved not only in collecting –
antiquities, specimens of plants, animals, fossils – but also in pharma-
cology. Costa’s grandfather had been a spice dealer in Mantua at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, and Costa’s father as well as Costa
himself served as “spice dealers to the ‘King.’” Unlike many pharmacists,
Costa left behind an impressive oeuvre, including the Discorsi sopra le
compositioni de gli Antidoti, & Medicamenti (1576), his best-known
work.86 Indeed, numerous collectors and physicians cultivated gardens
in and around Mantua, many of which, as the sixteenth century wore on,
contained samples of plants from the New World.87 Dwarfing them all,
however, was the botanical garden of the Gonzaga family, which grew
considerably in scope and fame during the reigns of Guglielmo (1550–87)
and his successor Vincenzo I (1587–1612). In 1603 Zenobio Bocchi
published a plan of the ducal garden entitled Giardino de’ Semplici in
Mantova.88 In Mantua Portaleone was exposed to celebrated and well-
stocked botanical gardens.
84
See Peter Dilg, “Apotheker als Sammler,” in Andrea Grote, ed., Macrocosmos in Microcosmo:
Die Welt in der Stube: zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450 bis 1800 (Opladen: Leske &
Budrich, 1994), 453–74.
85
Ibid., 453–4.
86
For more on Costa, see Dario A. Franchini et al., La scienza a corte: collezionismo eclettico,
natura e immagine a Mantova fra Rinascimento e Manierismo (Rome: Bulzoni, 1979), 41–4.
87
Ibid., 23.
88
Ibid., 130. Unfortunately, very few other plans or catalogs of botanical gardens survive from
Mantua in this period. Ibid., 116.
At times Portaleone’s treatment of technical matters such as volume

and measurement is decidedly bookish. Shiltei HaGibborim’s final
chapter, for example, deals with the weight of the various elements of the
incense mixture. As he does so, we may observe his medical training, as
well as his antiquarian sensibilities, most clearly.89 Portaleone repeatedly
refers to his profession’s practices and even introduces a special “doctors’
calculation” for the value of the dinar. Portaleone writes, “The dinar, in
the opinion of all the doctors, is half a scriptolo.” A few paragraphs later,
Portaleone explains that the drachma consists of “twenty of our unkiot,
as the doctors have said.”90 Portaleone was concerned with what a dinar
is. Since it is clear that there are 368 maneh in the overall mixture, the
only unresolved issue is the value of a dinar, since the maneh is, “accord-
ing to everyone,” equivalent to one hundred dinars. But with regard
to dinars, Portaleone laments that, in a manner redolent of Cardano’s
comments on the iugero, “opinions are legion.”91 Portaleone makes no
effort to hide his obvious professional pride: he even states that doctors
know things that other people simply do not. For example, he notes that
liquids such as honey, juice, water, and wine all have different capaci-
ties when put in the same vessel. This, Portaleone informs his reader, is
knowledge that doctors are privy to.92
Occasionally Portaleone blends classical learning with real-world
experience, as he does in his description of the process of grinding and
drying out incense. He mentions how spice particles would enter and
89
Guiseppe Olmi has convincingly linked natural science and antiquarianism in sixteenth-
century Europe. See his L’inventario del mondo: catalogazione della natura e luoghi del
sapere nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), 256, 300. Nancy Siraisi has
also developed this line of thinking in several articles, including “Anatomizing the Past:
Physicians and History in Renaissance Culture,” Renaissance Quarterly 53:1 (2000): 1–30,
and “History, Antiquarianism, and Medicine: The Case of Girolamo Mercuriale,” Journal of
the History of Ideas 64:2 (2003): 231–51.
90
SG, 94r: ‫ כאשר אמרו הרופאים‬. . . ‫לדעת כל הרופאים‬
91
SG, 94r: ‫ והמנה לדברי הכל הם מאה דינרים לכל מנה אמנם במשקל הדינר רבו הדעות‬For Cardano’s comment
about the difficulty of calculating the iugero, see chap. 63 (“De mensuris superficierum”) of
his Practica arithmetica in Hieronymi Cardani Mediolanensis, philosophi ac medici celeber-
rimi Opera Omnia (Lyon: sumptibus Ioannis Antonii Huguetan et Marci Antonii Ravaud,
1663), 4:115, where, discussing Milanese, Paduan, and Roman units of measurement, he
states that it is “impossible and tedious” to use multiple metrical standards: “impossibile
enim est et taediosum ponerere diversitatem usus cunctarum nationum cum una regula
cunctis satisfaciat.”
92
SG, 94v: ‫כאשר ידעו הרופאים‬
damage the spice grinder’s throat, causing irritation and changing the
quality of his voice. From his intimate knowledge of this practice, it is
plausible that he either tried this or had at least been around enough
spice dealers to know.93 As a humanist, Portaleone included a classical
reference and appropriately evoked the spirit in the temple, where voices
would rise in unison, urging the head spice grinder to “grind the spice
well.” To make this image come alive to his readers, Portaleone com-
pares this activity – for which there is no precise word in Hebrew –
to the Latin noun celeusma. That term refers to the call that the head
oarsman would shout out to his rowers to make them row in unison.94
But Portaleone’s description of drying incense betrays his most valued
sources of knowledge: common practice in Mantua. For example, he
uses the word trocischi to describe the piles of spices that Mantuan phar-
macists lay out to dry in the sun: “They would assemble portions of
roughly crushed spices and make of them trocischi, which are small,
fine, squared piles [of spices] spread out in the open air until they are
completely dry.”95 Then, Portaleone informs us, the process is repeated a
second and third time.
Though it is hardly surprising that an active physician would display
familiarity with the practices of contemporary pharmacology, it is note-
worthy how Portaleone uses that knowledge to experiment with the par-
ticulars of the ancient temple service. Earlier in the sixteenth century, the
Parisian physician Jean Fernel decried how much doctors depended on
pharmacists; the relationship, Fernel maintained, should be inverted:
The knowledge, collection, choice, culling, preservation, preparation, cor-

rection, and task of mixing of simples all pertain to pharmacists; yet it is
especially necessary for the physician to be expert and skilled in these things.
If, in fact, he wishes to maintain and safeguard his dignity and authority
among the servants of the art, he should teach them these things.96
93
SG, 95r: ‫כי כשיודקו היטב תפרח ותעלה עפרורית הבשמים בגרונו של שוחק ותזיק בגרונו‬
94
SG, 95r: ‫ היו מרימים קולם ואומרים הדק היטב נקראת הרמת הקול גם יחד בלשון לאטינו ציליאוסמה‬See Lewis
and Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 [1879]), 309, s.v.
celeusma.
95
SG, 95r: ‫להעמיד יחד חלקי הסממנים הבלתי כתושים היטב והיו עושים מהם טרוציסקי והם חלקים קטנים דקים‬
‫ומרובעים ושוטחים אותם לאויר עד שיבשו בשלמות‬
96
Fernel, Methodus medendi (Basel, 1622), preface, quoted by Karen Meier Reeds, Botany in
Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York: Garland, 1991), 25–6. The Latin reads
as follows: “simplicium cognitio, collectio, delectus, expurgatio, conservatio, praeparatio,
It is hard to tell how much Portaleone taught the spice grinders of

Mantua. It is clear, however, that he learned much from them.
Another practice that connects the world of pharmacists to that of
erudite natural philosophers is Portaleone’s emphasis on visual proof,
particularly the sort that comes from regularly handling botanical
products. The habit of seeing and describing rare specimens encour-
aged not only precise identification of ancient plants but also crit-
icism of ancient botanical authorities. Portaleone was hardly alone
among early modern Italians in correcting classical descriptions of
spices and incense. Portaleone gleefully reports that his contemporary
Prospero Alpino, in his De plantis aegyptis liber, proved the “ancient
physicians” were wrong about a specific type of myrrh.97 Portaleone
may have had in mind the fourteenth chapter of that work, entitled
“On Balsam, which is called Balassan by the Egyptians.” It opens as
follows:
The balsam plant grows throughout Egypt, does it not? A L PI NO : Not at

all: it flourishes in Arabia, where the Arabs attest the plant is much more
robust than in Egypt. G U I L A N D I N U S : Therefore Dioscorides, Theophrastus,
Pliny, Justinus, to say nothing of other ancient writers, were wrong when
they claimed that Balsam grew heartily in Egypt and Judaea? A L PI NO :
There is no doubt in my mind that those mistaken writers were not speak-
ing of Balsam’s place of origin, but were rather describing trees, sap, fruits
and other things. Besides, it is to be doubted if they themselves ever even
saw a living balsam tree.98
Alpino, like Portaleone, was a champion of firsthand experience. He

wrote to Giovanni Mauroceno, the addressee of De plantis aegyptiis, that
correctio, et miscendi industria, seorsum, ad Pharmacopaeos referuntur ac pertinent, quo-

rum tamen imprimis et Medicum gnarum peritumque esse oportet, siquidem apud artis
ministros auctoritatem, dignitatem que suam retinere ac tueri velit, quos docere haec ipsas
debet.” For the Latin text, see Reeds, 184 n. 77. I have used Reeds’s translation on pp. 25–6.
97
SG, 95v: ‫כי שקר דברו הרופאים הקדמונים כאשר כתבו שהיה נטיעת הצרי עצמית וטבעית ליריחו ולמצרים‬
98
Prospero Alpino, De plantis aegyptiis liber (Venice: apud Franciscum de Franciscis
Senensem, 1592), chap. 14, page 20r: “Nunquid balsami planta amplius in Aegypto vivit?
A L P I N . Nequaquam, sed in Arabia foilici, quam Balsami feracem omnes tum Aegyptij, tum
Arabes praedicant. G U IL AN D . Igitur Dioscorides, Theophrastus, Plinius, Iustinus atque alij
ex antiquis scriptoribus permulti, qui Balsamum tantum in Aegypto et in Iudae olim vixisse
prodiderunt, decepti sunt. AL P IN . Sine dubio illos non modo de loco Balsami patrio, sed
etiam de arbore quoque, succo, fructibus atque aliis deceptos fuisse arbitror, ex quo etiam
dubitandum esset ipsos balsami arborem viventem nusquam vidisse.”
he “saw and observed these plants, in various places in Egypt.”99 After

praising Alpino’s work, Portaleone tells his sons that “should you want
to know further comprehensive details about tzori, read his books,100
which are in Latin. There you will find all that you seek, and you will see
that even today we have this very sap that will never disappear from the
world, with the grace of God, may His name be blessed, Amen.”101
The emphasis on visual confirmation of botanical knowledge that Alpino
stressed encouraged Portaleone’s zeal in correcting ancient authorities. At
several points in the course of his work on incense, Portaleone mentions
having seen the plants and herbs he discusses. This stress on visual expe-
rience and material confirmation of textual authorities is something he
shared with numerous scholars in sixteenth-century Europe. In her study
of the legal culture of early modern England, Barbara Shapiro has shown
that the meaning of the term “fact” changed from the mid-sixteenth to the
mid-seventeenth century and came to indicate provable, observed action
as opposed to rumor or report.102 Botanists in later sixteenth-century
Italy shared this belief in the importance of visual proof. In Mattioli’s
commentary on Dioscorides, for example, he frequently notes the avail-
ability of spices and herbs in his native Italy. While discussing balsam,
Mattioli concedes that neither the sap nor the seeds nor the wood nor the
bark of the balsam tree is imported into Italy unless by means of adul-
teration and impostures.103 Nonetheless, Mattioli admits that he has seen
versions of this plant, such as the one he observed in the Holy Roman
99
Ibid., sig. a2r: “ . . . de plantis, quas olim in locis Aegypti inspexi, ac observavi.”
100
Portaleone refers to Alpino’s De balsamo dialogus, which was printed in the same 1592
edition of De plantis aegyptiis liber. See above, note 38.
101
SG, 95v: ‫ואם תרצו לדעת יתר פרטי הצרי בשלמות תקראו ספריו אלה שהם בלשון לאטינו כי שם תמצאו כל חפצכם‬
‫ותראו שגם בזמננו יש לנו השרף הזה שלא יבצר ממנו לעולם בחסד ה' יתברך שמו אמן‬
102
See Barbara Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2000). On the developing notion of fact in the early modern period, see also Lorraine
Daston, “Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe,” Critical
Inquiry 18:1 (1991): 93–124, reprinted in James Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry
Harootunian, eds., Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the
Disciplines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994): 243–74; Daston, “Baconian Facts,
Academic Civility, and the Prehistory of Objectivity,” Annals of Scholarship 8 (1991): 337–
63, reprinted in Allan Megill, ed., Rethinking Objectivity (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1994), 37–64. Also, Simona Cerutti and Gianna Pomata have collected essays under
the title Fatti: storie dell’evidenza empirica, in Quaderni storici 108:3 (December 2001).
103
Mattioli, Opera quae extant omnia, book 1, chap. I: 18, page 59: “veruntamen diu est, quod
in Italiam, ne in totam Europam, neque lachryma, neque semen, neque lignum, neque cortex
importantur, nisi adulteriis, et imposturis vitiata.”
emperor Ferdinand I’s collection, which he had received as a gift from

the Ottoman sultan Suleiman.104 Mattioli also informs his readers that
the Veronese collector and apothecary Francesco Calzolari, “exceedingly
skilled in medical matters,” brought him a sample of balsam while he was
at Trent.105 Just as Mattioli supplements his descriptions of plants with
occasional anecdotes about having seen them, so did Portaleone point
out his legitimate experience with the plants and herbs he discusses. For
example, regarding the grape vine lambrusca, which flourished – and still
flourishes – throughout the mantovano, Portaleone speaks from firsthand
experience, commenting that “the plant of this flower resembles a desert
vine, which we spoke about in the previous chapter. In Greek it is referred
to as oinanthe, and in Italian lambrusca.”106 Using a combination of clas-
sical erudition, practical knowledge, and firsthand experience with the
plants mentioned in the Bible and Talmud, Portaleone was able, as he
thought, to establish the identity of most of the elements of the ancient
incense mixture. This having been done, Portaleone set the stage for his
assembly of the anointing oil, one of its chief ingredients.
Making Biblical Incense: The Construction

of a Prohibited Product
In premodern Jewish culture, replicating the ancient incense mixture
was strictly proscribed. Portaleone was acutely aware of that proscrip-
tion. The prohibition against making biblical incense originates in the
Bible itself. The thirtieth chapter of Exodus describes the anointing oil
and lists its contents: myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, cassia, and olive oil.107
104
Ibid., 60: “legitimum autem opobalsamum notis omnibus comprobatum, vidi tamen ego
apud Imperatorem Ferdinandum Primum, Dominum meum clementissimum, a Solimano
Turcarum imperatore dono missum, quibusdam con nonnullis aliis muneribus.” Mattioli
met Ferdinand when the Holy Roman emperor came to Trent in the early 1550s. Sara
Ferri briefly discusses this episode in her essay “Profilo di Pietro Andrea Mattioli,” in
S. Ferri and E. Miraldi, eds., I giardini dei semplici e gli orti botanici della Toscana (Perugia:
Quattroemme, 1993): 159–64, 161.
105
Mattioli, Opera quae extant omnia, 60: “cui simile omnino mihi visum est illud quod anno
superiore detulit ad me Tridentum Franciscus Calceolarius Veronensis, rei medicae admo-
dum peritus.”
106
SG, 93r: ‫ונטיעת הפרח הזה הוא דומה לנטיעת הכרם המדברית אשר אמרנו בפרק הקודם שנקראת בלשון יון אינאנטי‬
‫בלעז‬ ‫או לאמברוסקה‬
107
Exodus 30:22–5.
A few verses later, scripture states that the oil “shall be a holy anoint-
ing oil to Me throughout your generations. Upon man’s flesh shall it
not be poured, nor shall you make any other like it, after its compo-
sition. . . . Whoever compounds any like it, or whoever puts any of it
upon a stranger, shall be cut off from his people.”108 Talmudic author-
ities analyze this scriptural threat. The first chapter of the Babylonian
Talmud tractate Keritot classifies “one who compounds the anointing
oil” in the category of thirty-five other actions that may lead to forcible
expulsion from the Jewish community.109 Understandably, as Portaleone
leaves behind his intellectual exercise of identification and description
and moves toward a practical excursus on how to make a crucial ele-
ment of that mixture, his first words are those of justification, caution,
and self-defense.
He begins with a clever circumlocution, announcing that in this section
he is merely “not concealing” information from his readers: “Therefore I
shall not conceal from you the recipe for this fine and holy oil, that is the
anointing oil.”110 Portaleone poses as one who merely refrains from con-
cealment and also emphasizes the scriptural, and therefore unassailable,
foundation of the assembly of this oil. Portaleone also acts as a suppli-
cant before God, alluding to the Psalms and adopting liturgical themes
from the Day of Atonement, writing “to God most high (Genesis 14:20),
our King, and our God, I pour out my complaint (Psalm 142:3) with a
heart cracked and crushed, and I plead (Deuteronomy 3:23) and pray
to His holy dwelling (Psalm 68:6) in heaven.”111 Finally, the Mantuan
physician legitimizes the construction of the oil of anointing, reminding
his readers that, up until the time of King Josiah, the secrets of its proper
mixture were known.112
To claim that the secrets of the anointing oil are latent in scrip-
ture, or that they were known far beyond the time of the Pentateuch,
was not enough of a justification for flouting rabbinic law. He
108
Exodus 30:31–3.
109
See BT Keritot 2a.
110
SG, 96r: ‫המשחה‬ ‫ולמען לא אעלים מכם מרקחת השמן הטוב והקדוש הוא שמן‬
111
SG, 96r: ‫ ולאל עליון מלכנו ואלהינו בלב נשבר ונדכה אשפוך שיחי ואתחנן ואתפלל אל מעון קדשו השמימה‬Cf.
Psalms 51:19; 142:3.
112
For more on King Josiah, see 2 Chronicles 34–5; 2 Kings 22–3; and BT Pesah￷im 56a for a
list of his reforms.
needed a stronger one, and he found it through a selective reading

of Maimonides’ Laws of the Temple Vessels. Portaleone told his sons
that “our rabbis, of blessed memory, permitted us to study the plain
meaning [of scripture] in all m atters . . . you are studying in order to
understand and instruct.”113 To his mind Portaleone’s reconstruction
of the incense mixture was undertaken “to understand and instruct.”
Portaleone also underscores Maimonides’ ruling that “one who does
this in order to study or transmit [the teaching] to the public is exempt
[from punishment].”114 Conveniently, Portaleone neglects to cite or
mention the previous line of Maimonides’ code, which is unambigu-
ous about the illicit nature of Portaleone’s project. Maimonides makes
it plain that “one who compounds incense from these eleven spices
according to these prescribed weights in order to smell it, even though
he does not smell it, is condemned to a premature, divinely ordained
death, provided that he does this intentionally. If, however, he did this
inadvertently, without knowing it was prohibited, he must bring a
fixed sin-offering.”115 It is almost certain that Portaleone was aware
of this prohibition; nevertheless, he found his loophole in the law and
exploited it fully.
Portaleone’s exposition of how to create the ancient incense mixture
is explicitly cast as an expansion of Maimonides’ Laws of the Temple
Vessels and implicitly formulated as an elaboration of Talmudic discus-
sions about the proportions of the incense mixture. While rabbis in trac-
tate Keritot do discuss the weight of the various elements of the incense
mixture, the Talmudic text does not delve into technicalities. Instead,
it contains such generalities as “Moses would boil the olive oil with
the spices,” and their “roots were first soaked in water, then removed
from the water, then they poured oil over them.”116 Although there are
some details about how much olive oil was used, and how much anoint-
ing oil emerged at the end of the process, the section lacks detail about
the weight, quantity, and proportion of spices. Maimonides’ treatment
113
SG, 96r: ‫ אבל אתה למד להבין ולהורות‬. . . ‫רבותינו ז"ל התירו לנו הלמוד הפשוט בכל הדברים‬
114
Maimonides, Hilh￵ot Kelei HaMiqdash 2:10: ‫ עשאה להתלמד בה או למסרה לצבור פטור‬Though
Portaleone does not say so, the line comes from BT Keritot 5a.
115
Maimonides, Hilh￵ot Kelei HaMiqdash 2:9: ‫העושה קטרת מן אחד עשר סמנין אלו לפי משקלות אלו כדי‬
‫קבועה‬ ‫להריח בה אף על פי שלא הריח חייב כרת על עשייתה אם עשה במזיד ובשוגג מביא חטאת‬
116
BT Keritot 5a.
of this issue is fuller but not detailed enough to satisfy Portaleone.

He announces to his readers, “I have decided to teach you the phar-
macist’s method of compounding the anointing oil. Listen and I will
utter what the Lord places in my mouth (Numbers 22:38), since the
Rav [Maimonides] in the first chapter, second section of the Laws of the
Temple Vessels did not say enough about its pharmacology.”117 Framing
his investigation as an elaboration of what Maimonides neglected to
adequately treat, Portaleone grants his work legitimacy in the sphere of
Jewish jurisprudence.
Jurisprudential justification was not the only type Portaleone sought;
he provides a theological rationale for instructing his readers in the art
of making the anointing oil, too.
I adjure, by the Lord of Heaven and the Lord of Earth (Genesis 24:3), who-
ever reads this chapter of mine not to compound the oil after this [fashion]
but rather [to make the oil] as God commands by the authority of the
prophet. For we are in exile because of our sins, and we have contracted
the ritual impurity imparted by a corpse. We are not able to purify our-
selves properly through the process described in the written Torah, in the
pericope H￵uqah [Numbers 19:1ff.]. Since it is not unreasonable to think
that an impure person might involve himself in this holy pharmacology, he
should become pure exclusively by the instructions of God.118
Portaleone also cites verses attesting to God’s mercy and his willingness
to make the impure pure, and he adds as a closing:
Praise is due to the Lord our God! For we have exerted ourselves and dis-
covered, as far as I know, all that is necessary for the knowledge of the
spices for incense: its preparation, weight, and manufacture – and also
what is necessary for compounding the anointing oil, and the art by which
it is done.119
117
SG, 97r: ‫על כן יעדתי ללמד אתכם אופן רקוחו של שמן המשחה שמעו ואנכי אדבר כפי אשר ישים ה' בפי כי הרב בפרק‬
‫הראשון של כלי המקדש פסקא שנית לא דבר ברקוחו כמספיק‬
118
SG, 100v: ‫והנני משביע באלקי השמים ואלקי הארץ כל מי שיקרא פרקי זה שלא ירקח שמן כזה אלא במצות ה' על פי‬
‫נביא בפרט כי אנו בגלותנו בגלל עונותינו טמאים אנחנו טומאת מת ולא נוכל לטהר את עצמנו על פי התורה הכתובה‬
‫בפרשת חקת כדין וכשורה ואינו מן הראוי שהטמא יטפל עצמו ברקוח הקדוש הזה אלא כשיהיה טהור ובמצות ה' ביחוד‬
119
SG, 100v: ‫והתהלה לה' אלהינו כי יגענו ומצאנו לפי דעתי כל הצריך בידיעת סממני הקטורת מכשיריה משקלה ופטומה‬
‫וגם מה שצריך ברקוחו של שמן המשחה ומלאכתו‬
Conclusion
In applying the methods of Renaissance botany to the explication of
Jewish texts Portaleone created new applications for the former and
introduced a novel way of studying the latter. The Mantuan physician
used the methodologies of learned medicine and natural philosophy
to diversify his study of the Bible and postbiblical Jewish texts. One
of the ways he did that was by preferring modern authors to ancient
authorities. Another was by welcoming new forms of evidence, such
as artisanal expertise, into his investigations. Like many early modern
scholars, Portaleone did not cite all of the authorities he relied on. As
a justification for that tendency, he professed, “I have not come to con-
fuse the world with critiques and therefore I will omit them.” To those
words he added, in ecumenical fashion, “I seek the truth from whomever
pronounces it.”120 The words of those who pronounced the truth were
recorded in a variety of books: classical texts, rabbinic treatises, and
Renaissance monographs. But, as we have seen, they were also uttered
in the piazze, pharmacies, and workshops of late sixteenth- and early
seventeenth-century Mantua.
120
SG, 86r: ‫שאמרו‬ ‫ואני לא באתי לבלבל העולם בהשגות ולכן אשמיט אותם ואבקש האמת ממי‬
Conclusion
Near the beginning of Shiltei HaGibborim, Abraham Portaleone’s

Hebrew encyclopedia, readers are greeted with an odd sight: the printed
Greek alphabet, in both upper-case and lower-case fonts. The Mantuan
physician claimed that he included Greek letters in his Hebrew book
in order to clarify the comments of Jewish sages, some of whom spoke
Greek and drew on its scientific traditions to understand the natural
world around them.1 But Shiltei HaGibborim is interlarded with more
Greek words written by Dioscorides, Theophrastus, and their pagan peers
than those spoken by Portaleone’s Jewish forebears. Portaleone learned
Greek as a medical student in order to study and practice m edicine;
he used it as an old, infirm man to elucidate his own Jewish tradition.
Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s observation in 1518, which
appears at the beginning of this book, that “aspiring t heologians” learn
natural philosophy applies not only to Pico’s Catholic contemporar-
ies; it clearly applies as well to Pico’s descendants, and Portaleone’s
contemporaries, in the world of learned Latinate culture.
In that culture, particularly its Italian variant of the later sixteenth
century, natural philosophy had many applications and was enriched
by a number of traditions. Just as natural philosophy helped Portaleone
SG, 4r. On the Talmudic rabbis’ knowledge and use of Greek for scientific purposes, see Saul
1
Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in
the II–IV Centuries C.E. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1942), xx. In addition
to the passage in SG, 4r, see also SG, 8r: ‫הואיל כי בפרקי אלו בא פעמים רבות זכירת האלפא ביתא יונית‬
‫“ אמרתי כי טוב הוא לכתוב לכם כאן צורתה משלם כדי שתבינו בנקלה מה שכתבתי בה מהמלות זרות עמה‬Since the
Greek alphabet is mentioned many times in these chapters of mine, I thought it best to write
the alphabet here for you, in its complete form, so that with it you may easily understand
the foreign words I have written in it [the Greek alphabet].”
230
Conclusion 231
write about his Jewish faith and history, Jewish texts helped his
Catholic peers write about natural philosophy. In July 1587, for exam-
ple, Orazio Augenio, then a professor of practical medicine at Turin,
completed an epistolary treatise addressed to Serafino Olivieri, the
dean of the Roman Rota, the highest ecclesiastical judicial tribunal.2
Its subject was whether physical signs of virginity could be found in
all women.3 Augenio maintained that they could not, a position that
Olivieri believed threatened canon law provisions for physical inspec-
tion in disputed matrimonial cases.4 In support of his argument, he
devoted a chapter of his treatise to “what the sign of virginity, which
is mentioned in Deuteronomy, might be, both according to Jews and
according to Christians.”5 Deuteronomy 22 presents the case of a bride
whose virginity is disputed by her husband. Augenio cites the scriptural
verse (Deuteronomy 22:17) that reads they shall “spread the clothing
before the elders of the city,” to determine if there are visible signs of
her virginity on her gown, namely blood.6 Augenio adds by way of
clarification: “Rabbi Solomon [ben Isaac, or Rashi], among the Jews
a very serious writer, and of a great reputation, says that these words
should be understood metaphorically.”7 Beyond his mention of Rabbi
2
For basic information on Augenio, see DBI 4:577–8. On his medical writings, see Nancy
G. Siraisi, Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the Renaissance
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 62–84. For discussion of this treatise,
see ibid., 75–6. Séraphin Olivier-Razali (1538–1609) became an auditor for Roman Rota in
1564 and held that position for forty years.
3
Orazio Augenio, Epistolarum et consultationum medicinalium prioris tomi libri XII
[-alterius tomi libri XII], 2 vols. in 1 (Venice: apud Damianum Zenarium, 1592), 2:1r–8r.
“Reverendissimo in Christo Patri Domino Domino Seraphino Olivario, Sanctissimi Domini
Nostri Papae Capellano, eius Sacri Palatii Caussarum Auditori, Domino suo colendissimo.
Ostenditur virgines foeminas eam non habere ex natura membranam, quam nonnulli inter-
septum, alii claustrum virginale, alii hymen vocant. Nullum certum, propriumque signum
esse virginitatis. Et quod olim medicarum mulierum, quas hodie obstetrices vocant, ex
Platone, et Galeno extiterit officium.”
4
Siraisi, Communities of Learned Experience, 76.
5
Augenio, Epistolae, 2:7r–7v. “Quod signum sit virginitatis, cuius mentio fit in Deuteronomio,
tum secundum Haebreos, tum secundum Christianos.”
6
Deuteronomy 22:17: “Expandent vestimentum coram senioribus civitatis.”
7
Augenio, Epistolae, 2:7r: “Rabi Salamon inter Haebreos scriptor gravissimus, et magni
nominis, ea verba metaphorice intelligenda, cum praecipue dicat.” Rashi’s comment on
Deuteronomy 22:17 reads ‫ הרי זה משל מחוורין הדברים כשמלה‬I have not been able to ascertain
Augenio’s precise source. He might have turned to Nicholas of Lyra’s commentary on the
Bible, or to Pietro Galatino’s Opus . . . de arcanis catholicae veritatis (Ortona: per Hieronymum
Suncinum, 1518), book 7, which concerns virginity. In book 7 of Galatino’s work, however,
Solomon, or Rashi, Augenio drew additional support for his views from
an unattributed “saying of the rabbis.”8 In his dispute with Olivieri,
Augenio turned to the Bible and its Jewish expositors for confirmation
of his views regarding the female anatomy.
The use of natural philosophy to explicate the Bible, and vice versa,
was conspicuous in Italy from the middle of the sixteenth century to the
beginning of the seventeenth. At that time and in that place, an intercon-
fessional group of medical doctors pursued a unique form of scholarly
writing that blended biblical and natural philosophic study. The eclec-
tic works of Ulisse Aldrovandi, Andrea Bacci, Melchior Guilandinus,
Amatus Lusitanus, David de’ Pomi, and Abraham Portaleone belie
easy classification or appellation. Jacques Le Goff once observed
about twelfth-century literature that its “very nature . . . is too subtle
for the classificatory grids of present-day history.”9 The same may be
said for the works examined in the foregoing pages. Rooted in the soil
of Renaissance medical culture, they demonstrate a notable degree of
intellectual agility. They display a tendency to approach ancient texts
with more regard for their content, accuracy, and antiquity than for
their sacrality. And they show how in the courts, universities, and col-
leges of physicians of northern Italy the classical canon was broadened
to include not only newfound works from pagan antiquity but also
the Bible.
The group of learned physicians this book has examined had intellec-
tual cousins in Iberia and its dominions. Many Spanish and Portuguese
physicians, however, skirted around the Bible rather than integrating it
into their medical and philosophical writings. Conversos are a prime
Deuteronomy 22 is not mentioned. Nicholas of Lyra writes regarding cases of disputed

virginity that “alii exponunt hebrei dicentes quod est locutio parabolica” and observes that
“Scriptura sacra in pluribus locis habet talem modum loquendi metaphoricum.” He does
not mention Rashi. See Biblie iampridem renovate pars prima [-sexta] complectens penta-
teuchum: una cum glosa ordinaria, et litterali moralique expositione Nicolai de Lyra, necnon
additionibus Burgensis, ac replicis Thoringi, novisque distinctionibus et marginalibus sum-
mariisque annotationibus (Basel: Froben, 1502), 356v.
8
Augenio, Epistolae, 2:7r: “ex iis unicuique constare potest, quid ex Rabinorum senentia
de cruentato linteolo, ac certo signo virginitatis, sentire oporteat.” Rabbinic statements on
this issue may be found in Sifrei, §§ 236–8; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilh￵ot Ishut,
chap. 11: §§ 9–12.
9
Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984), 135.
Conclusion 233
example of this tendency.10 Fearful of the Inquisition and its charges

of Judaizing, they were understandably reluctant to address the Bible
in any way that could reveal their heritage or expose imputed Jewish
beliefs. In the 1550s, for example, the Spanish converso Andrés Laguna
(1499–1559) composed a commentary on Dioscorides’ De materia med-
ica that bears some similarities to that of Amatus Lusitanus.11 Where
Amatus thought it proper to discuss King David’s language, Laguna does
not mention the Bible at all.12 Nor do chapters on Balsam or Bitumen
present opportunities for the Spanish physician to discuss their presence
in biblical texts.13 Similarly, in his work on meteorology, one book of
which concerns its medical applications, Stephanus Rodericus a Castro
(1559–1627) seldom mentions the Bible.14 In one revealing instance,
a Castro lists several mineralogical products with curative properties,
including hyacinth and the horn of the monocerote – both commonly
believed in the sixteenth century to be equivalents of biblical realia. But
he does not cite the Bible at all.15
The most conspicuous work of natural philosophy from this period
composed in Iberia that does address the Bible directly was not written by
a converso but rather by Francisco Vallés (1524–92), physician to Phillip
II. First published at Lyon in 1587, De iis quae scripta sunt physice in
10
On the popularity of the medical profession among New Christians, see Yosef Hayim
Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso: A Study in Seventeenth-
Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971),
70–2. On the same phenomenon elsewhere in the Sephardic diaspora, see Yosef Kaplan,
“The Sephardim in North-Western Europe and the New World,” in Haim Beinart, ed.,
Moreshet Sepharad/The Sephardic Legacy (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), 2:240–87,
280–1.
11
Andrés Laguna, Annotationes in Dioscoridem Anazarbeum (Lyon: apud Gulielmum
Rouillium, 1554). On Laguna and his converso background, see Harry Friedenwald, The
Jews and Medicine, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944), 2:419–
29; and James Nelson Novoa, “Andrés Laguna in Papal Rome: The Documents of the
Mozoncillo Ecclesiastical Benefice,” Minvera 25 (2012): 211–32 and works cited there. I
thank Dr. Novoa for sharing his work with me.
12
Laguna, Annotationes, “De myrrha,” 36–7.
13
Ibid., “De balsamo,” 19–20; “De bitumine,” 43–4. “Bitumen,” or pitch, was the Vulgate
rendering of one of the two adhesives used to seal Moses’ cradle (Exodus 2:3).
14
Stephanus Rodericus a Castro, De meteoris microcosmi libri quatuor (Florence: apud
Iunctas, 1621). An exception is book 4, chap. 6, “De sanguinis menstrui veneno,” 170–4,
173, which concerns Moses and the plagues he wrought on Egypt.
15
Ibid., book 4, chap. 2, “Alexipharmaca unde habeant suam facultatem,” 154–8,
esp. 155–6.
libris sacris, sive de sacra philosophia (On those things that are written
regarding physics in the Holy Scriptures; or, On sacred philosophy) is,
at first glance, similar in tone and scope to the works composed by the
Italian protagonists examined in this book. Biblical quotations lie aside
references to ancient and medieval medical works. To glorify the Bible,
Vallés applied his formidable scientific acumen and medical erudition
to its scrutiny. But Vallés’s exegetical imagination differs substantially
from that of his Italian peers, in ways that underscore the uniqueness of
Aldrovandi, de’ Pomi, and Portaleone. Perhaps Vallés’s exegetical imag-
ination was limited by a network of correspondents that was smaller
and less international than that enjoyed by his colleagues elsewhere in
Europe.16 Perhaps Iberian naturalists’ disinterest in collecting objects and
forming Kunst- und Wunderkammern induced a relationship to material
culture that was abstract rather than concrete.17 Perhaps they were wary
of ecclesiastical and inquisitorial structures that were more rigid than
those in Italy.
Whatever the reasons, De iis quae scripta sunt is the product of a very
different mind and culture. In Vallés’s book, the Bible is always the point
of departure. It remains the touchstone for every topic discussed, and all
of Vallés’s learning serves to clarify scripture’s meaning and justify its
content with reference to ancient and contemporary scientific thought.
Whereas the Spanish physician skips over Exodus 2 and its mention of
the material form in which Moses’ crib was constructed, which, as we
have seen, engaged Guilandinus and Aldrovandi, he had much to say
about chapter 15 of that book and its narrative of Moses turning bit-
ter water into sweet.18 This miracle cried out for scientific elucidation.
The Italian writers analyzed in this book chose independent topics for
analysis and integrated scrutiny of the Bible into them. The molds into
which they poured their learning were shaped to produce knowledge
about natural philosophical problems, linguistic puzzles, or antiquarian
products – not biblical interpretation.
16
Laurent Pinon, Livres de zoologie de la Renaissance: une anthologie 1450–1700 (Paris:
Klincksieck, 1995), 15.
17
Brian Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006), 62.
18
Francisco Vallés, De iis quae scripta sunt physice in libris sacris, sive de sacra philosophia
(Lyon: apud Franciscum Fabrum, 1595 [1587]), chap. 15, 108–10.
Conclusion 235
Vallés’s relationship to the clergy is also very different from that of

Aldrovandi. The Spaniard piously asserted that human intelligence
is weak and fallible while the church remains strong and infallible.19
To his mind intellectuals grappling with the Bible needed to fall back
upon the authority and guidance of the church. Aldrovandi’s experience
inverts this formulation: the church needed him as much as he needed
the church. After all, it was Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti and his brother
Camillo who persuaded him to devote years of his life to an investiga-
tion of the Bible’s natural history. In at least one important and populous
diocese of northern Italy – Bologna – leading church officials not only
welcomed the involvement of naturalists in biblical interpretation but
actively sought it out.
Another revealing discrepancy between Vallés’s work and that of the
Italians featured in this book is Vallés’s relative indifference to the Bible’s
original languages and his related tendency to accept scripture’s claims
at face value. Vallés appears to have had complete faith in his bibli-
cal text: he never questions the terminology of the Vulgate, and rarely
calls upon other languages (such as Hebrew or Greek) to clarify obscure
vocabulary.20 Psalm 45 with its detailed botanical terminology fails to
engage Vallés’s attention; Psalm 77, with its description of “the doors of
heaven” opening in order to rain down manna, does, and merits a chap-
ter.21 In his other published writings, such as his work on Hippocrates,
attentiveness to language figures prominently.22 But Vallés could not, or
would not, apply the methods he used in medical research to those he
employed in biblical study. As we have seen, the Italian protagonists of
this book most certainly did.
Related to this faith in the solidity of the biblical text is a credulity
with regard to the Bible’s scientific inerrancy. In the preface to De iis
quae scripta sunt, Vallés wrote “since some natural questions are woven
into the line of discussion, I believe that they are all very true, since they
19
Ibid., 6: “testor ante omnia, nihil me in hoc, aut ullo alio meorum operum asserere, nisi
quatenus probetur a sancta Romana Ecclesia, penes quam veritas est et sapientia.”
20
One exception is ibid., chap. 1, p. 26, where Vallés notes that the Hebrew verb in the verse
“et spiritus Domini ferebatur super aquas” (Genesis 1:2) is multivalent and can mean both
“moved” and “lay upon.”
21
Ibid., chap. 57, 324–7.
22
Craig Martin, “Printed Medical Commentaries and Authenticity: The Case of De Alimento,”
Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 90:4 (2004): 17–28, 21–2.
are dictated by the spirit of God.”23 In a similar vein, Vallés claimed

that the Bible “contained a whole other doctrine – that is, a natural
one.”24 Portaleone, Aldrovandi, and de’ Pomi also believed in the Bible’s
truth. The assumption of scriptural veracity, at least doctrinally and
juridically, may have been the same on the Iberian and Italian penin-
sulas. However, the way those learned communities engaged scripture’s
sacrality was markedly different. Vallés explains and ultimately justi-
fies the Bible on scientific grounds to show that its ritual and narrative
components stand up to scrutiny. He deployed his erudition to validate
scripture. His Italian peers employed a greater range of intellectual com-
mitments: imaginative, experiential, mechanical. They aspired, above all
else, to animate scripture and showed that it could be resuscitated all
around them. Portaleone’s efforts to find new information to enliven
one of Exodus’s drier portions, Aldrovandi’s receipt of wood understood
to duplicate that mentioned in Ezekiel from the botanist Luca Ghini,
and Aldrovandi’s botanical romps in the Dolomite foothills with leading
church officials in order to find manna, indicate a belief that the Bible’s
natural world could not be ignored or left in the charge of those offi-
cially appointed to interpret it; it had to be brought to life.
The legacy of Aldrovandi, de’ Pomi, and Portaleone had a short after-
life. Fifty years after Guilandinus and Aldrovandi used the Bible to con-
firm their views on ancient cultivation of papyrus, Fernando Cardoso,
the physician and apologist for Judaism who later took the name Isaac,
made creative and historical use of the Old Testament in his scientific
and antiquarian treatise on water. Shortly before departing his native
Spain for Italy, where he would spend more than half his life, he wrote:
Already in Alexander’s time people would put ice in their drinks, since in
his histories Cares of Mitilene wrote that Alexander decreed that, in the
city of Petra, in India, thirty graves, or large pits, be built. He filled them
with snow and laid oak branches over them so that the snow would be
better preserved. But let us discover [this practice’s] origin, which is of
much greater antiquity: from the time of Solomon one may deduce that it
23
Vallés, De iis quae scripta sunt, 5: “tamen cum quaedam in ipso sermonum ductu texantur
naturalia, ea omnia verissima esse existimo, utpote quae, a summe vero Dei spiritu dictata
sint.”
24
Ibid., 6: “ego mihi persuadeo atque omnibus persuasum volo, ut omnem aliam doctrinam,
quae vera sit, ita naturalem, in his divinis libris contineri.”
Conclusion 237
[snow] had been used: “As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a
faithful messenger to them that send him: for he refresheth the soul of his
masters.” The wise one [Solomon] . . . uses a simile, saying that [the messen-
ger] pleases him as the coolness of the snow in the summer. This, then, is a
clear signal that [snow] was used, since otherwise the comparison would
be inappropriate.25
Cardoso used a verse from Proverbs to establish the antiquity of an ali-

mentary practice. His Spanish predecessor Vallés also flagged this verse,
but for a much different purpose: to exonerate alimentary practices in
scripture – namely, the consumption of cold beverages.26 Cardoso was
not interested in vindicating scripture’s dietetic statements; for him, as
for Guilandinus and Aldrovandi before, the Bible served as a source for
the history of the ancient world.
Even though their working methods may be discerned in later books,
such as Cardoso’s study of water and snow, the protagonists of this
book did not attract students, devise a methodology, or inspire a move-
ment. Their work is not an early manifestation of biblical criticism,
nor should it be seen as an attempt to secularize sacred literature. Still,
there were unintended outcomes of their work: inadvertently, these
natural philosophers encouraged future students of the biblical past to
study sacred history the same way they studied pagan history. Indeed,
in Bologna during Aldrovandi’s lifetime, scholars were doing just that:
his friend Carlo Sigonio wrote his work on the Hebrew republic not
as a polemicist or a theologian but as a historian.27 Aldrovandi elided
25
Fernando Cardoso, Utilidades del agua i de la nieve, del bever frio i caliente (Madrid: Alonso
Martin, 1637), 55v–56r: “ya en tiempos de Alexandro se usava el bever con nieve, pues en
sus historias que escrivio Cares Mitileneo, se refiere, que mandò en la ciudad de Petra en la
India hazer treinta fosas, o cavas grandes, y llenarlas de nieve, echandole encima ramas de
roble, que deste modo se conservava mejor. Mas de mayor antiguedad descubramos su prin-
cipio, porque de tiempo de Salomon se colige averse usado, ‘sicut frigus nivis in die messis,
ita legatus fidelis ei, qui misit illum, animam ipsius requiescere facit.’ . . . Manifiesta el Sabio
como queda descansado el animo del quien remite un fiel criado, quien con toda fidelidad
se asegura que complirà con sus obligaciones: y usa da una similitud, diziendo que assi le
recrea como el frio de la nieve en el estio; luego es clara señal que entonces se usava, pues de
otro modo la comparacion fuera impropria.” By “Cares Mitileneo” Cardoso refers to Cares
of Mitilene’s Historias de Alejandro. Cardoso quotes the Vulgate’s translation of Proverbs
25:13. On Cardoso, see Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto.
26
Vallés, De iis quae scripta sunt [1595 ed.], chap. 61, 339–41.
27
Carlo Sigonio, De republica hebraeorum libri VII (Frankfurt: apud haeredes Andreae
Wecheli, 1583); B. Roussel, “Connaissance et interprétation du Judaism antique: des biblistes
differences between the Bible and other types of ancient literature by

excerpting passages from both, juxtaposing them, and assigning them
equal evidentiary value – as did de’ Pomi and Portaleone. Commonplace
books, a staple of sixteenth-century intellectual life that helped generate
the sorts of treatises considered in this book, assessed facts – whether
recent or ancient, bookish or empirical – as equivalent to each other.28
By comparing the Bible’s depictions of the natural world to those in
pagan scientific writings, sixteenth-century natural philosophers unin-
tentionally demoted the Bible from its exalted position in the canon of
sacred literature. To their minds, they were promoting scripture, not
demoting it; any literate person who read their works would under-
stand the precise meaning of the Bible and thereby improve his knowl-
edge of it.
Sixteenth-century naturalists could not predict that in the eighteenth
century their works would be stripped of their spiritual message and
anthologized in lavish encyclopedias such as Blasio Ugolini’s Thesaurus
antiquitatum sacrarum (Thesaurus of sacred antiquities).29 Ugolini’s
antiquarian tomes presented the sacred past much the same way as con-
temporary works portrayed the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Etruscan
chrétiens de la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle,” in Chantal Grell and François Laplanche,
eds., La République des lettres et l’histoire du Judaïsme antique XVIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris:
Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 1992), 21–50, 42; Paolo Prodi, “Vecchi appunti e
nuove reflessioni su Carlo Sigonio,” in Massimo Firpo, ed., Nunc alia tempora, alii mores:
storici e storia in età postridentina (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2005), 291–310, which sketches
out connections between Sigonio, Paleotti, and Aldrovandi; Giudo Bartolucci, La repub-
blica ebraica di Carlo Sigonio. Modelli politici dell’età moderna (Florence: L. S. Olschki,
2007); William McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Kalman Neuman, “The Literature of the
Respublica Judaica: Descriptions of the Ancient Israelite Polity in the Antiquarian Writing
of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” (Hebrew) (PhD diss., Hebrew University,
2002), iv.
28
Ann Blair, “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book,” Journal
of the History of Ideas 53:4 (1992): 541–51, 545.
29
Blasio Ugolini, Thesaurus antiquitatum sacrarum, 34 vols. (Venice: J. G. Herthz, 1744–69).
For example, Ugolini includes the Hebrew original and a Latin translation of portions of
Abraham Portaleone’s SG. See Ugolini, Thesaurus, vol. 11, cclvii–dxlviii. Discussing SG,
Ugolini praises its erudition and says nothing about the work’s clear spiritual and apologe-
tic content: “in quo tanta sese ubique offert rerum praestantia et eruditio, ut merito ceteris,
qui hoc argumentum illustrarunt, praeferendus esse videatur.” Vol. 9, unnumbered pages
before index.
Conclusion 239
past.30 Unknowingly, sixteenth-century naturalists helped forge the tools

with which eighteenth-century antiquarians and encyclopedists drained
the Bible of its sacrality.
Of course, neither Portaleone nor Aldrovandi could see into the
future or predict such a fate for their work or that of their peers. On the
contrary, both emphasized the pious nature of their research. In 1611
Portaleone was an elderly hemiplegic, and he wrote his encyclopedia in
a spirit of expiatory contrition:
When God wanted to chasten me, I fell ill. Two years ago the whole left
side of my body became as if dead, and I could no longer touch my hand to
my breast nor walk in the street, even leaning on a cane, because of the loss
of feeling and ability to move my limbs. I searched my behavior and saw
(but only after Him who sees all) that in addition to my sins, which were
more numerous than the hairs on my head, [I had] neglected the Torah. For
I had dealings with the children of Greek wisdom, and I sought to reach the
heights through philosophy and medicine, which lured me with their hon-
eyed words to seek salvation in the ways of darkness, and thus prevented
me from devoting myself to the heritage of the community of Jacob, as I
should have.31
Portaleone’s Shiltei HaGibborim displays ample evidence of “dealings

with the children of Greek wisdom.” Contrary to what Portaleone
claimed, those dealings did not prevent him from enriching the “heritage
of the community of Jacob.” In fact, they enabled him to.
Unlike Portaleone, Aldrovandi did not struggle to reconcile his study
of the Bible with his pursuit of natural philosophy; they were conso-
nant endeavors for him. Some time after 1579, Aldrovandi reflected
that “one of the greatest desires of my life has been to see Jerusalem
and Mount Lebanon for devotion and also to know the great variety of
30
See the introduction to Grell and Laplanche, eds., La République des lettres et l’histoire du
Judaïsme antique. On antiquarianism in the eighteenth century, see Arnaldo Momigliano,
“Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
13 (1950): 285–315; Peter Miller, ed., Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the
Modern Cultural Sciences (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007).
31
Portaleone, SG, 2v. For discussion, see Alessandro Guetta, “Avraham Portaleone, le scienti-
fique repenti,” in Gad Freudenthal, Jean-Pierre Rothschild, and Gilbert Dahan, eds., Torah
et science: perspectives historiques et théoriques. Études offertes à Charles Touati (Leuven:
Peeters, 2001), 213–27.
plants set there by God.”32 Articulating the symbiosis between piety and
knowledge of nature, Aldrovandi was speaking not only for himself but
for a group of Italian naturalists – both Jewish and Christian – whose
impact on biblical studies and religious culture in sixteenth-century Italy
and beyond deserves to be better understood.
32
BUB Ms. Aldrovandi 51, De cruce, 2 vols., 1:111r: “Io nell’età mia frà i maggiori desiderii
che ho’havuto di vedere parte del mondo è stata Gierosolima, e questo monte Libano sì per
devotione, sì anco per conoscere tanta varietà di piante generate dal grand’ Iddio.”
Appendix I
The Ancient Israelite Incense Mixture
Biblical Text
Exodus 30:34–38
‫ ועשית‬.‫ויאמר יהוה אל משה קח לך סמים נטף ושחלת וחלבנה סמים ולבונה זכה בד בבד יהיה‬
‫ ושחקת ממנה הדק ונתתה ממנה לפני העדת‬.‫אתה קטרת רקח מעשה רוקח ממולח טהור קדש‬
‫ והקטרת אשר תעשה במתכנתה לא‬.‫באהל מועד אשר אועד לך שמה קדש קדשים תהיה לכם‬
‫מעמיו‬ ‫ איש אשר יעשה כמוה להריח בה ונכרת‬.‫תעשה לכם קדש תהיה לך ליהוה‬
Jewish Publication Society Translation

And the Lord said to Moses, Take to you sweet spices, storax, and ony-
cha, and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense; of each
shall there be a like weight: And you shall make it a perfume, a confec-
tion according to the art of the apothecary, mixed together, pure and
holy; And you shall beat some of it very small, and put of it before the
Testimony in the Tent of Meeting, where I will meet with you; it shall
be to you most holy. And as for the perfume which you shall make, you
shall not make for yourselves according to its composition; it shall be to
you holy for the Lord. Whoever shall make it like that, to partake of its
scent, shall even be cut off from his people.
Babylonian Talmud Keritot 6a

‫ פיטום הקטרת הצרי והצפורן והחלבנה והלבונה משקל שבעים של שבעים מנה מור‬:‫ת"ר‬
‫וקציעה שיבולת נרד וכרכום משקל ששה עשר של ששה עשר מנה הקושט שנים עשר קילופה‬
‫שלשה וקנמון תשעה בורית כרשינה תשעה קבין יין קפריסין סאין תלתא קבין תלתא אם אין לו‬
241
242 Appendix I: The Ancient Israelite Incense Mixture
‫ אף‬:‫ ר' נתן אומר‬.‫יין קפריסין מביא חמר חיוריין עתיק מלח סדומית רובע מעלה עשן כל שהוא‬
‫ חיסר אחת מכל סממניה חייב מיתה‬.‫ ואם נתן בה דבש פסלה‬.‫כיפת הירדן כל שהוא‬
Soncino Translation
Our Rabbis have taught: the compound of incense consisted of balm, ony-
cha, galbanum and frankincense, each in the quantity of seventy Maneh;
of myrrh, cassia, spikenard and saffron, sixteen Maneh by weight; of
costus twelve, of aromatic rind three, and of cinnamon nine Maneh; of
lye obtained from leek, nine Kab; of Cyprus wine three Se’ah and three
Kab, though if Cyprus wine is not available, old white wine may be used
instead; of salt of Sodom the fourth of a Kab, and of Ma’aleh ‘ashan a
minute quantity. R. Nathan says: Also of Jordan resin a minute quantity.
If, however, honey is added, the incense is rendered unfit; while if one
omits one of the ingredients, he is liable to the penalty of death.
Appendix II
Ulisse Aldrovandi and Hebrew
The following manuscripts by Ulisse Aldrovandi display significant

engagement with the Hebrew language. All of them may be found in
Bologna’s Biblioteca universitaria.
1. Bibliologia Ms. Aldrovandi 83 (2 vols.). Begun in 1580.

2. De cruce Ms. Aldrovandi 51 (2 vols.). Completed in 1597.
3. Miscellanea de animalibus et plantis Ms. Aldrovandi 97. Written over
an extended period, mostly between 1581 and 1586.
4. Lettere e discorsi Ms. Aldrovandi 6 (3 vols.), especially vols. 2 and 3.
Written over an extended period, mostly between 1578 and 1582.
5. Ulyssi Aldrovandi et amicorum Dictionarium Latino-Syro-Chaldaicum
Ms. Aldrovandi 21 (3 vols.) Undated.
6. De lucentibus Ms. Aldrovandi 91. Completed in 1577.
7. Theatrum biblicum naturale Ms. Aldrovandi 54 (2 vols.). Begun
in 1585.
243
Appendix III
The Index to Portaleone’s Responsorum et

consultationum medicinalium liber (1607)
Abraham Portaleone’s Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium

liber contains responsa and consultationes that Portaleone wrote to and
received from more than forty correspondents. The men with whom
Portaleone corresponded were of extremely variable fame. Illustrious
physicians such as Girolamo Mercuriale, as well as nearly the entirety of
the University of Padua’s medical faculty at the turn of the seventeenth
century, are prominently listed in this index. At the same time, obscure
men, such as Jacobus Saravallus (Jacobo Saravallo) and Samuelis Limae
(Samuele da Lima), grace its pages. I have not been able to identify every
contributor. What follows after these brief remarks is a partial annota-
tion of the index. When possible, I have listed the vernacular names of
Portaleone’s correspondents. When appropriate, I have given their insti-
tutional affiliation and noted their major works.
Portaleone corresponded with Jews as well as Christians. In this index
Portaleone’s son, David, lists the names of nearly all Christian correspon-
dents his father wrote to or received letters from. However, in a clear act
of obfuscation, he omitted from the index letters to or from Jews. For
example, Portaleone wrote (in Latin) to Abraham Provenzali, a Jewish
educator from Mantua and Portaleone’s own teacher, on the topic of
epilepsy and hysteria. See “Consilium Excellentissimi Patris de Histerica
passim pro mulierum hebrea. Excellentissimo Legum Artiumque Doctori
Domino Abrahae Provinciali Hebreo,” 293r–298v. The letter is signed
and dated “Abraham e Portaleonis Mantuanus Medicus hebraeus ita
consulebat pridie nones Novembris anno ab origine mundi 5329” (12
November 1569). In the index to this collection the consilium is referred
to only as “De Hysterica passione Excellentissimi Patris.” In another
245
246 Appendix III: The Index to Portaleone’s Responsorum
consilium, Portaleone describes Provenzali as “l’excellentisimo dottore

e non mai lodato a pieno Nostro Signor Abramo Provenzali, fedelissimo
mio singolare Precettore.” See 464r, “Epistola de suffusione occulorum
Excellentissimi Patris.” Curiously, Portaleone dates this letter according
to the Jewish calendar and in Hebrew characters: ‫שמ"א‬, or 1581. More
examples of correspondence with Jews could be given. A consilium on
hypochondriacal melancholy was composed “per donna Rachella do
Foa Regensi Hebrea,” 513v. A treatise on ancient deafness was written
“pro Juvens da Foa Hebreo,” 130v. Finally, a consilium on ulceration
of the liver was sent to “D. Raffaello de Carminis Hebreo,” 232r. The
addressees of these final three examples are not listed in the index to
Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber.
Index Consultationum Medicinalium quae in hoc libro continentur

De Hemicrania Ex.mi Patris Cap: 1 fol: 1
De Hemicrania Ex.mi Claudini
1
Cap: 2 fol: 7
De Hemicrania Ex.mi Rudii2 Cap: 3 fol: 11
De Hemicrania Ex.mi Vigontiae
3
Cap: 4 fol: 15
De Hemicrania Ex.mi Aquapendentis4 Cap: 5 fol: 20
1
Giulio Cesare Claudino (ca. 1550–1618) was the author of De ingressu ad infirmos libri
duo (Venice: apud Donatum Pasquardum agentem P. P. Tozzii, 1628). He also authored a
book of medical letters: Responsionum et consultationum medicinalium tomus unicus; in
duas sectiones partitus, in quarum prima Responsiones; in altera Consultationes continen-
tur (Frankfurt: sumptibus Lazari Zetzneri, 1607).
2
Eustachio Rudio (1551–1611) was the author of a number of works on pulse, the heart, the
soul, and ulcers. On him, see Nancy G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon
and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987), 114, 115, 117, and 277.
3
Alessandro Vigonza was the second professor extraordinarius of practica at the University
of Padua. See Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy, 116, 118.
4
Girolamo Fabrizi d’Acquapendente (1533–1619) taught at the University of Padua from
1565. Duke Guglielmo called him to Mantua to pronounce a medical opinion on the suspec-
ted virginity of his son’s bride Margherita Farnese; d’Acquapendente’s opinion helped annul
the marriage. For more on this episode, see Adalberto Pazzini, “La Medicina alla corte dei
Gonzaga a Mantova,” 291–351, in Mantova e i Gonzaga nella Civiltà del Rinascimento.
Atti del convegno dall’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e dall’Accademia Virgiliana con la
collaborazione della città di Mantova sotto l’alto patronato del Presidente della Repubblica
Italiana Giovanni Leone, Mantova 6–8 ottobre 1974 (Mantua: Accademia Virgiliana,
1977), 339, 324. For more on Fabrizi, see Nancy G. Siraisi, History, Medicine, and the
Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 65;
Gianna Pomata, “Praxis Historialis: The Uses of Historia in Early Modern Medicine,” in
Appendix III: The Index to Portaleone’s Responsorum 247
De Hemicrania Ex.mi Mercurialis5 Cap: 6 fol: 22

De Hemicrania Ex.mi Minadoi6 Cap: 7 fol: 25
De Hemicrania Ex.mi Bussoli Cap: 8 fol: 29
Dubia proposita ab Ex.mo Alessandro
Magno circa verba Hippocratis in libro de
septimestri partu7 Cap: 9 fol: 33
Responsio Ex.mi Patris ad eundem Cap: 10 fol: 34
De Stipticitate Alui Ex.mi Patris Cap: 11 fol: 44
Responso Ex.mi Aquapendentis, Campolongi
et Saxoniae de stipticitate alui8 Cap: 12 fol: 47
De Hydrope Ascite et Tympanite, Gonorraea
et Atrophia
Ex.mi Pampuri et Ex.mi Ormani9 Cap: 13 fol: 49
Responsio Ex.mi Patris pro eodem Cap: 14 fol: 52
De diminutis mensibus dysenteria et Artritide
Ex.mi Patris Cap: 15 fol: 57
De tumore sub regione ventriculi percepto, de dolore
Articulari atque de Melancholia Hippochondriaca
Responsio Mercurialis, Aquiliani, et Cabrianae
Pro eodem domino10 Cap: 17 fol: 64
Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi, eds., Historia: Empricism and Erudition in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, 105–46, 116–18.
5
Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606). See Chapter 4, note 2. His best-known work was an
antiquarian treatise on gymnastics, Hieronymi Mercvrialis Foroliviensis de arte gymnastica
libri sex (Venice: apud Juntas, 1569).
6
Giovanni Tomasso Minadoi (1545–1615) was professor ordinarius at the University of
Padua. In addition to his medical teaching and writing he composed a Historia della guerra
fra Turchi et Persiani … cominciando dall’anno MDLXXVII (Venice: Andrea Muschio, &
Barezzo Barezzi, 1588). See Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy, 114 n. 110.
7
See Chapter 4.
8
Emilio Campilongo (1550–1604) was professor ordinarius of practica at the University of
Padua. His De arthritide liber unus (Venice, apud Paulum Meietum, 1586) was published
in several editions. Ercole Sassonia (1551–1607) was professor of anatomy and surgery at
the University of Padua. He published extensively on venereal disease, melancholy, pulses,
fevers, and practical medicine. See Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy, 114 n. 110.
9
Stefano Pampuri of Cassalmagiore.
10
Filippo Cavriani (1536–1606) lived in Mantua and wrote several discorsi about Tacitus
(Florence: Giunti 1597, 1600). See Bruno Spigarolo, Filippo Cavriana: mantovano del XVI
secolo, letterato tacitista, storico e politico (Mantua: Sometti, 1999). Scipione Aquiliani was
the author of De placitis philosophorum, qui ante Aristotelis tempora floruerunt (Venice:
apud Ioannem Guerilium, 1620).
Altera responsio Aquiliani pro eodem Domino Cap: 18 fol: 66

Altera responsio Filippi Cabrianae pro eodem
Domino Cap: 19 fol: 71
De Melancholia Hippochondriaca Ex.mi Patris Cap: 20 fol: 74
Victus Ratio Ex.mi Patris pro eodem Ill.mo et
Ex.mo Domino Cap: 21 fol: 79
De Catharro difficultate spirandi et Cardialgia
De Catharro cordis palpitatione Dispnea
De Ictero, Lienis tumore et Hidrope Ex.mi
Codronchii11 Cap: 24 fol: 96
Responsio Ex.mi Patris pro eodem Domino Cap: 25 fol: 100
De Sputo sanguinis et febre Hectica Ex.mi Patris Cap: 26 fol: 104
De Dolore Articulari et Nephritico Ex.mi Patris Cap: 27 fol: 105
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de Asthmate Cap: 28 fol: 109
De Haemitriteo et Hectica Febre Ex.mi Patris Cap: 29 fol: 110
Enarratio Affectuum Ill.mi Cattanei Ex.mi Patris Cap: 30 fol: 112
De doloribus Articularibus Ex.mi Patris Cap: 31 fol: 112
De orthopnea seu defluxu catharri ad
brachium sinistrum et
Collum et Melancholia Hyppochondriaca
De tumore canceroso in sphincteri enato
De Cachexia, Oedenate circa foemora,
et de ulcusculis
circa pudenda ennati[s] Ex.mi Patris Cap: 34 fol: 120
De epilepsia ab aura Ex.mi Patris Cap: 35 fol: 121
Nonnulla Medicamenta Ex.mi Patris pro alui
stipticitate Cap: 36 fol: 123
Methodus Ex.mi Patris servanda in curatione
morborum
qui fiunt per paulatinam congestionem et per
defluxum Cap: 37 fol: 125
11
Perhaps Giovanni Battista Codronchi (1547–1628), author of De annis climactericis: nec
non De ratione vitandi eorum pericula, itemque De modis vitam producendi … commenta-
rius (Cologne: Matthaei Smitz, 1623).
Consensus quotuplex sit, Ex.mi Patris Cap: 38 fol: 126

De Apostemate Aurium Ex.mi Cabassi Cap: 39 fol: 127
De Antiqua surditate Ex.mi Patris Cap: 41 fol: 130
De Catharro et Melancholia Hyppochondriaca

De Catharro fluente a Capite Ex.mi Bottatii12 Cap: 43 fol: 136
De Tabifica dispositione Mercurialis, Aquiliani et
Cabrianae Cap: 45 fol: 138
De Tabifica dispositione Ex.mi Patris pro eodem
domino Cap: 46 fol: 139
De Catharro, Vertigine, Melancholia
Hippochondriaca et nonnullis
alijs symptomatibus Ex.mi Patris Cap: 47 fol: 140
Responsio Ex.mi Scatti pro eadem domina13 Cap: 48 fol: 142
Responsio Ex.mi Pantaleonis per eadem domina Cap: 49 fol: 144
Medica Historia de sputo sanguinis et febre hectea
iam confirmata, Ex.mi Patris Cap: 50 fol: 145
De Sputo sanguinis et Hectea Febre Ex.mi
Massariae et
Ex.mi Campolongi pro eodem Ex.mi domino14 Cap: 51 fol: 147
De Nigredine Linguae absque febre Ex.mi Patris Cap: 52 fol: 149
Responsio de nigredine linguae Ex.mi Augenij
atque Ex.mi Campolongi pro eadem Ill.ma
domina15 Cap: 53 fol: 152
12
Ioannes Iacobus Bottattius, or Giovanni Iacopo Bottazzo, of Montecastello. His Dialogi
maritimi were published at Mantua in 1547 by Iacopo Ruffinelli. He was one of the founders
of the Accademia degli Argonauti. See DBI 13:422–3.
13
Andreas Schato (1539–1603), German mathematician and physician. Professor of mathe-
matics at the University of Wittenberg and, after 1592, professor ordinarius of medicine at
that university.
14
Alessandro Massaria (1510–98) was appointed to the first ordinarius chair in practica at the
University of Padua in 1587.
15
Orazio Augenio (ca. 1527–1603) was the second professor ordinarius of theoria. He pub
lished two volumes of epistolae and consultationes. See Horatii Augenii a monte sancto
medici, et philosophi praestantissimi … Epistolarum et consultationum medicinalium Libri
XII (Venice: apud Damianum Zenarium 1592 [1579]). See also my discussion at the begin-
ning of the Conclusion.
Responsio de nigredine linguae Ex.mi Massariae Cap: 54 fol: 154

Epistola Ex.mi Patris de tumore oedematoso Cap: 55 fol: 155
De tumore oedematoso cum maximo dolore
in coxa et
crure, Ex.mi Sebastiani Cupani Cap: 56 fol: 156
De tumore oedematoso Ex.mi Bottatii pro eodem
domino Cap: 57 fol: 160
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de eodem tumore
oedematoso Cap: 58 fol: 161
Epistola Ex.mi Alfonsi Galvagni ad eodem patrem Cap: 59 fol: 163
Responsio Ex.mi Patris ad eundem Ill.mum
dominum Cap: 60 fol: 164
epistola conscripta circa eandem materiam ab
Ex.mo Bisolio
medico ad Ex.mum Patrem Cap: 61 fol: 165
Responsio Ex.mi Patris ad eandem epistola Cap: 62 fol: 167
De mensium stillicidio ex.mi Patris Cap: 63 fol: 167

epistola medicinalis de melancholia
Hippochondriaca ex.mi Bronzini
ad ex.mum Patrem Cap: 64 fol: 170
Responsio ex.mi Patris ad eundem dominum Cap: 65 fol: 172
De destillatione ad occulos, fauces, et Pectus
Baccutii Cap: 66 fol: 173
Responsio ex.mi Patris ad eundem dominum Cap: 67 fol: 174
De Cachexia cum aliis symptomatibus Ex.mi
Patris Cap: 68 fol: 176
De Melancholia Hippochondriaca, Hydrope
timpanite et inflatione
ventriculi Ex.mi Patris Cap: 69 fol: 179
De doloribus perceptis in Genu dextro
et foëmore cum
tumore praeter naturam pro ser.mo D. Duce,
Ex.mi Patris16 Cap: 70 fol: 182
16
Guglielmo I (1538–87) was Duke of Mantua from 1550 to 1587. He was succeeded by
Vincenzo Gonzaga (1562–1612), who ruled the duchies of Mantua and Montferrat from
1587 until his death in 1612.
De stupore in utroque pede et manibus

percepto, Lienis
tumore et scabie Cap: 71 fol: 186
Responsio Ex.mi Patris pro eodem Domino Cap: 72 fol: 189
De Catharro petente pectus et caeteras
corporis partes
cum febre pro ser.ma Archiduce Austriae ecc.17 Cap: 73 fol: 190
De stillicidio urinae et Lapide vesicae Ex.mi Patris Cap: 74 fol: 191
De spirandi difficultate tussi et febre Ex.mi Patris Cap: 75 fol: 193
Responsio Ex.mi Zecchij ad ex.mum Patrem
pro eadem domina18 Cap: 76 fol: 195
Nonnulla quaesita proposita ab ex.mo
Alexandro Magno
ad Ex.mum Patrem Cap: 77 fol: 197
Solutio ad dicta quaesita ex.mi Patris Cap: 78 fol: 199
Relatio omnium aegritudinum quibus affectus
fuit Ill.us Comes
D. Camillus de Castilionio, Ex.mi Patris Cap: 79 fol: 206
De dispnaea Ex.mi Patris Cap: 80 fol: 208
De doloribus intestinorum et alijs
symptomatibus pro ser.no
d.d. Gulielmo duce ecc. Ex.mi Patris19 Cap: 81 fol: 211
De tussi et epiglotidis corrosione Ex.mi Accursii Cap: 82 fol: 219

Responsio Ex.mi Patris pro eadem Puella Cap: 83 fol: 219
De Icteritia Ex.mi Patris pro ser.ma d. ducissa ecc. Cap: 84 fol: 221
De diminuta mensium purgatione Ex.mi Patris Cap: 85 fol: 224
Responsio Ex.mi Capivacae de diminuta mensium
purgatione20 Cap: 86 fol: 225
17
Johanna of Austria was the daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I. She married Francesco of
Tuscany in 1565.
18
Giovanni Zecchi hailed from Bologna. He wrote books about fever, Hippocratic aphorisms,
and urine. He also published a collection of consultationes. See Ioannes Zecchii liber primus
consultationum medicinalium (Rome: apud Gulielmum Facciottum, ad instantiam Ioannis
Martinelli, 1599).
19
See note 16.
20
Girolamo Capivaccio (1523–89) published a number of works including a Nova methodus
medendi (Frankfurt: apud Joannem Feyrabendium, 1593). Some of his medical letters were
included in a late sixteenth-century collection: Consiliorum medicinalium, conscriptorum
Responsio Ex.mi Mercurialis de diminuta mensium

purgatione Cap: 87 fol: 227
De exulceratione renum Ex.mi Sorboli Cap: 88 fol: 228
De exulceratione renum Ex.mi Ronetti pro eodem Cap: 89 fol: 230
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de exulceratione renum Cap: 90 fol: 232
De Lepra Ex.mi samuelis Limae21 Cap: 91 fol: 234
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de Lepra Cap: 92 fol: 235
De Glaucedine occulorum Ex.mi samuelis de Lima Cap: 93 fol: 239
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de Glaucedine occulorum Cap: 94 fol: 240
De profluvio muliebri et febre tertiana Ex.mi Patris Cap: 95 fol: 240
Responsio Ex.mi Capivacae de profluvio mulierum
et tertiana Cap: 96 fol: 244
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de suppressione
Menstruorum cum nonnullis
alijs sev[er]is symptomatibus Cap: 97 fol: 246
De supressione menstruorum, histerica
passione, et alijs
symptomatibus Ex.mi Jo: Baptistae Ponae22 Cap: 98 fol: 251
De Catharro et Atrophia Ex.mi Patris Cap: 100 fol: 257
Responsio Ex.mi Julii Alexandrini ad Ex.m
Patrem23 Cap: 101 fol: 260
a praestantissimis atque exercitatissimis nostrorum temporum medicis, liber singularis

(Frankfurt: apud Andreae Wecheli haeredes, Claudium Marnium et Joannes Aubrium, 1598).
21
Samuel of Lima did not leave behind any medical writings. He was a Jewish physician who
wrote to Portaleone about a case of possible leprosy involving an unnamed Venetian Jew. See
Consilium Excellentisimi Doctor Samuelis di Lima di Lepra pro Nobili Hebreo Veneto, which
begins “Domino Abrahamo e Portaleonis Medico Excellentissimo Mantuano, Doctor Lima
Medicus hebreus S.P.D.” Responsorum et consultationum medicinalium liber, 234r. Samuel of
Lima signed his letter according to the Jewish calendar: “Venetiis die 9 nisan 5350,” ibid., 235v.
In Portaleone’s response, he does the same: 22 Nisan 5350 (5350 corresponds to 1590).
22
Giovanni Battista Pona (1565–1630) was a Veronese apothecary and botanist whose most
well-known work was Monte Baldo descritto da Giovanni Pona veronese, in cui si figu-
rano, & descrivono molte rare piante de gli antichi, da’ moderni fin’ hora non conosciute
(Venice: Roberto Meietti, 1617). Monte Baldo, west of Verona, was prized as a lush site
for the study of plants. Pona also owned a museum in Verona. See his Index multarum
rerum quae repositorio suo [Johannis Ponae] adservantur (Verona, 1601), as cited in Paula
Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern
Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 180.
23
Giulio Alessandrini (1506–90) was a physician and one of the authors of Salubrium sive
de sanitate tuenda, libri triginta tres (Cologne: apud Geruinum Calenium & haeredes
Quentelios, 1575).
De epiphora et Rhoeada oculorum Ex.mi Patris Cap: 102 fol: 261

De convulsione secundum crura Ex.mi Patris Cap: 103 fol: 264
Responsio Ex.mi Mercurialis de Convulsione
crurum Cap: 104 fol: 267
Responsio Ex.mi Capivacae de Convulsione
crurum Cap: 105 fol: 268
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de tabifica
dispo[sitio]ne et Phtisi Cap: 106 fol: 270
De epilepsia Ex.mi Patris Cap: 107 fol: 272

De tertiana specie Hydropis Ex.mi Patris Cap: 108 fol: 274
De Cephalea et Hemicrania Ex.mi Patris Cap: 109 fol: 276
De dolore articulorum Ex.mi Patris Cap: 110 fol: 283
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de dolore Colico et de
stillatione Cap: 111 fol: 286
De vertigine, melancholia, Cordis palpitatione et
aliis symptomatibus Ex.mi Patris Cap: 112 fol: 287
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de spirandi difficultate et
melancholia Cap: 113 fol: 292
De Hysterica passione Ex.mi Patris Cap: 114 fol: 293
De Artritide, importuna effusione
et ardore urinae et
pollutione in somno. Ex.mi Patris Cap: 115 fol: 298
De epinychide Ex.mi Patris Cap: 116 fol: 315
De ophtalmia Ex.mi Simonis de Benis Cap: 117 fol: 321
Occulorum Anatomen Ex.mi Patris Cap: 119 fol: 339
De schiade et tumore circa crus
ex.mi Alex.i Magni Cap: 120 fol: 342
De melancholia hyppochondriaca et Mensium
retentione Ex.mi Patris Cap: 122 fol: 344
De dolore p[er]cepto inter brachium et
cubitum absque
rubore, renitentia et tumore ex.mi Patris Cap: 123 fol: 351
De gonorraea, podagra, scabie, et sang.ne
hemorrohidarum
ex.mi Patris Cap: 124 fol: 352
De stupiditate capitis et extremarum

partium, destillatione
tussi et imbecillitate ventriculi Ex.mi Patris Cap: 125 fol: 359
De suppressione urinae, caecis hemorrohidibus
De cruentoso sputo, tussi et dolore pectoris Ex.mi
De Procidentia ani Ex.mi Patris Cap: 128 fol: 380

De tumore umbellici et circumsitarum
partium, hoc est
de exomphalone Ex.mi Patris Cap: 129 fol: 383
De sterillitate Ex.mi Patris Cap: 130 fol: 385
De sterillitate Ex.mi Guarinoni, et Ex.mi Ponae24 Cap: 131 fol: 387
De tumore oëdematoso dextri cruris atque de
destillatione ad thoracem Ex.mi Patris Cap: 132 fol: 389
Responsio de tumore oëdematoso et
destillatione, Ex.mi
Massariae, Ex.mi Aquapendentis, et Ex.mi
Campolongi Cap: 133 fol: 391
De modo preservandi a Veneno Ex.mi Patris25 Cap: 134 fol: 393
De lapide Bezohar Ex.mi Patris26 Cap: 135 fol: 401
De inflatione ventriculi Ex.mi Patris Cap: 136 fol: 404
De melancholia Hippochondriaca Baccanelli27 Cap: 137 fol: 407
De melancholia Hippochondriaca Ex.mi Cattanei
pro eodem28 Cap: 139 fol: 413
24
Cristoforo Guarinoni Fontani (d. 1602) was a Veronese physician. His work was included
in a volume of sententiae on Aristotle’s De anima (Frankfurt: imprimebat Ioannes Saurius
sumptibus Nicolai Steinii Bibliopolae & Notarii, 1601); he also published medical consilia.
See his Consilia medicinalia in quibus universa praxis medica exacte pertractatur (Venice:
Baglionus, 1610).
25
This discursus was written in November 1592 to Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua.
26
This discursus was also written in November 1592 to Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of
Mantua. Discursus Excellentisimi Patris de Lapido Bezahar dieto ad instantiam signoris-
simo D. Ducis Mantuae ecc[elentissimo]. 23 November 1592.
27
Giovanni Battista Baccanelli (1508/9–1571) was from Reggio Emilia. He was the author of
De consensu medicorum in curandis morbis: libri quatuor (Lyon: Honoratus, 1572).
28
Elsewhere in this collection Portaleone wrote a case history for Guglielmo Cattaneo. See
“Brevis Historia Massimi Gulielmi Cattanei conscripta ab Excellentissimo papi,” 112r. I have
De melancholia Hippochondriaca Auricalchi pro

eodem Cap: 140 fol: 414
De Hydrope timpanitica Ex.mi Bertutii29 Cap: 141 fol: 416
De tumore Lienis palpitatione in sinistra
gena, et parte
ipsius Nasi, Ex.mi Corregii ad Ex.mum Patrem Cap: 143 fol: 427
De vino Calybeato utrum i[dem] competat
in schyrro lienis
non exq[ui]sito Ex.mi Pagani ad
Ex.mum Patrem Cap: 145 fol: 432
De Gutturis Hernia Ex.mi Patris Cap: 147 fol: 436
De Gutturis Hernia innominati medici Cap: 148 fol: 447
De Gutturis Hernia innominati medici Cap: 149 fol: 449
De Gutturis Hernia Ex.mi Achati Fer[rariensis]30 Cap: 150 fol: 450
De Retentione Urinae Medici Casalensis Cap: 151 fol: 451

Responsio Ex.mi Patris de Retentione Urinae Cap: 152 fol: 452
De scirrho Meseraei Ex.mi Patris Cap: 153 fol: 457
Responsio Ex.mi Cassolae de scirrho Meseraei31 Cap: 154 fol: 460
De numero et differentia Panum, et quid sit Panis
lotus et aquaticus Ex.mi Patris Cap: 155 fol: 462
Epistola de suffusione occulorum Ex.mi Patris Cap: 156 fol: 464
Responsio praedictae epistolae Cap: 157 fol: 464
not been able to identify Guglielmo Cattaneo. A certain Alphonsus Cataneus Ferrariensis
gave morning lectures on medicina theorica at La Sapienza in Rome in 1587. See Emanuele
Conte, I maestri della sapienza di Roma dal 1514 al 1787: i rotuli e altre fonti (Rome: Nella
sede dell’Istituto Palazzo Borromini, 1991), 1:126.
29
Alfonso Bertocci was best known as the author of a Methodus generalis et compendiaria
ex Hippocratis, Galeni, et Avicennae placitis deprompta ac in ordinem redacta (Lyon: apud
Gabrielem Coterium, 1558).
30
I cannot precisely identify this figure, but a certain “Achates” composed an Italian prose
prologue to a sixteenth-century miscellany in the possession of Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett,
Ms. 79 D5. See Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum (London: Warburg Institute, 1963–97),
3:468b.
31
Scipio Cassola, along with Giovanni Francesco Boccalini, published a work entitled Scipionis
Cassolae cum Joanne Francisco Boccalino medico Asulano disceptatio an epithematum usus
antiquis medicis fuerit cognitus (Parma: apud Seth Viottum, 1565).
De suffusione occulorum Ex.mi Patris pro eodem Cap: 158 fol: 465

Altera epistola de p[rae]dicta dieta suffusione Cap: 159 fol: 469
De Febre quartana Ex.mi Patris Cap: 160 fol: 470
Regula servanda in elephanciasi ubi agit
de Balneis Reginae Ex.mi Patris Cap: 161 fol: 470
De dolore capitis et vertigine Ex.mi Patris Cap: 162 fol: 476
De Morbo Gallico Ex.mi Patris Cap: 163 fol: 479
De scirrho non exquisito in Foemore Ex.mi Patris Cap: 164 fol: 484
De dolorum capitis quem multa sequuntur
symptomata
De fluxu muliebri et de salsa oculi dextri
lacrimatione Ex.mi Iacobi Saravalli Cap: 166 fol: 487
De fluxu muliebri et de salsa occuli dextri
lacrimatione Ex.mi Patris Cap: 167 fol: 488
De epilepsia Ex.mi Patris Cap: 168 fol: 499
De mense lunari et Medico ubi
ostenditur quomodo
dies vigesimus decretorius dicatur Ex.mi Patris Cap: 169 fol: 503
De melancholia Hyppochondriaca et alijs
symptomatibus Ex.mi Patris Cap: 170 fol: 503
De oesophagi affectione Ex.mi Patris Cap: 171 fol: 508
De sero lactis Ex.mi Patris Cap: 172 fol: 509
De melancholia Hyppochondriaca fluore muliebri

De suffusione occulorum Ex.mi Patris Cap: 174 fol: 513
Responsio Ex.mi Longi de tenui
destillatione ad pectus
ad Ex.m Patrem ubi agitur de Cauterio32 Cap: 175 fol: 514
32
The Longius who was the recipient of this responsio was perhaps the philologist Joseph
Lang[e] (1570–1615), rather than Johann Lange, the longtime court physician at the court
of the Elector Palatine in Heidelberg, who wrote unkindly about Jewish physicians and was
unlikely to have corresponded with one. See Chapter 4, note 28 for more on Lang[e]. Finally,
it is possible Portaleone corresponded with Antonius Longus, who gave a funeral oration at
the University of Padua upon the death of Nicolao Pontio in 1585. See Antonio Riccoboni,
De gymnasio patavino … commentariorum libri sex (Padua: apud Bolzetam, 1598), 129r.
De Februm quartana Ex.mi Antiochii ad ex.mum

Patrem Cap: 177 fol: 515
Responsio Ex.mi Patris ad eundem de februm
quartana Cap: 178 fol: 516
De Apoplexia ex flatibus Ex.mi Magni ad Ex.mum
Responsio Ex.mi Patris de Apoplexia ex flatibus Cap: 180 fol: 518
De Palpitatione Cordis Ex.mi Magni ad Ex.mum
De Ileo Ex.mi Patris ad eundem Ex.mum Magnum Cap: 183 fol: 523
De Ileo et palpitatione cordis Ex.mi Patris ad
eundem Cap: 184 fol: 524
De Triplici quartana Ex.mi Pennonis ad Ex.m
De febre continua, icteritia, magnitudine Lienis
tumiditate
Ventris, Catharro, siti et tussi Ex.mi Patris Cap: 187 fol: 527
De difficultate spirandi, tussi, cordis
palpitatione febre et
aliis symptomatibus Ex.mi Patris Cap: 188 fol: 530
De tremore, lassitudineque membrorum,
vertigine, urinae incontinentia
egerendi difficultate, inapetentia,
memoriae diminutione
et locutionis interceptione Ex.mi Patris Cap: 189 fol: 532
De febre et mensium retentione Ex.mi Patris Cap: 190 fol: 534
De febre et splenitica dispositione Ex.mi Patris Cap: 191 fol: 537
De fluxione in brachio et crure sinistro,
Melancholia Hippochondriaca
de ulcero gallico in recto intestino suborto Ex.mi
De febre quartana Lienis obstructione et Catharro
pro ser[enissi]ma D.
Ducissa etc. Ex.mi Patris Cap: 193 fol: 541
De febre, vomitu, adstrictione alui et vertigine Cap: 194 fol: 546

De febre, tumore Lionis, purulenta
urinae excretione
et dolore hemorrhoidarum Ex.mi Patris Cap: 195 fol: 550
De difficultate spirandi, tussi, cordis palpitatione,
febre
iecoris, tumore oëdematoso et epilepsia Cap: 196 fol: 552
De vomitu Ex.mi Patris Cap: 197 fol: 555
De dolore capitis et vertigine Ex.mi Patris Cap: 198 fol: 557
De podagra, inappetentia et vertigine
De febre, dolore circa regionem
vesicae cum stillicidio
urinae Ex.mi patris Cap: 200 fol: 563
De febre, destillatione salsa, phtisi
et colli convulsione
De mirabilibus Artis Ex.mi Patris Cap: 202 fol: 567
De volvulo Ex.mi Patris Cap: 203 fol: 571
De arthritide Podagra et Chiragra Ex.mi Patris Cap: 204 fol: 574
De suppressione Menstruorum Ex.mi Patris Cap: 205 fol: 579
De dolore capitis Ex.mi Patris Cap: 206 fol: 584
De melancholia mania Lycantrophia et
Aman[t]ibus Ex.mi Patris Cap: 207 fol: 592
De cruentoso lotio Responsio Ex.mi Patris Cap: 208 fol: 593
Epistola Ex.mi Cervei ad Ex.mum Patrem,
querens num Cauterium
fieri debet in latere affecto laborante pectore,
vel non Cap: 209 fol: 596
Epistola Ex.mi Botacii ad Ex.mum Patrem de
tumore iecoris Cap: 211 fol: 597
epistola de palpitatione cordis

et sputo sanguinis Cap: 213 fol: 598
epistola Ex.mi Patris de affectibus occulorum

pro Ill.mo
d. Marchione de Carrettis33 Cap: 214 fol: 599
epistola Ex.mi Patris in qua agitur de
Balneis i[dem] Cassiani
num i[dem] competant in Podogra Cap: 215 fol: 600
33
Caretto is a small village in Liguria about eighty kilometers west of Genoa. It is not known
who the village’s marquis was at the time Portaleone wrote.
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Index
Abiaso, Nicola, 162 Alessandrini, Giulio, 252n23

Abraham ibn Ezra, 23, 95, 123, Alexander the Great, 73, 90, 236–7
130, 196 Almosnino, Moses ben Baruch, 25
Abravanel, Isaac, 22, 196; Portaleone’s Alphabet of Ben Sira, 54
criticism of, 205–9 Alpino, Prospero, 187–8, 206, 223–4
Abudrahin, Moses, 14n57 Amatus Lusitanus, 2, 4, 31, 39, 40–5,
Accademia degli Invaghiti, 9 48–55, 58–61, 64, 69–70, 163, 232–3
Adonijah, Jacob ben H￸ayim, 23–4 anabaptists, 176
Aetius, 166–7 anatomy, in Renaissance medical
Alatino, Moses, 8 education, 5
Alatino, Yehiel, 112 Anguillara, Luigi, 75
Albertus Magnus, 135–7, 150 Antwerp Polyglot, 59, 92n65, 98
Alcalá, University of, 29 Aquila, 93, 149
Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 2, 4–6, 11, 17, 19, Aquiliani, Scipione, 247n10
22, 27, 29n113, 30–1, 35–6, 37–9, Arabic language, 46, 57n71, 94, 117,
50, 52, 54, 55–70, 71, 73–4, 76n16, 130, 207–8, 215
77–9, 83–8, 90–1, 93, 96–101, Aramaic language, 57n71, 103–4, 124,
103–8, 114n20, 121, 146n141, 148, 169; Aldrovandi’s use of, 27, 60–1,
165, 194, 232, 234–40; Bibliologia, 84, 90; de’ Pomi’s use of, 109n2, 128
74, 96–7, 100–1; De cruce, 62–70; Archivolti, Samuel, 120n46
defended by Gabriele Paleotti, 106–7; Arias Montano, Benito, 20, 28, 59,
Hebraicae linguae rudimenta, 55; 67–9, 97–100
Lexicon latino-hebraico et syro- Aristotle, 7, 56, 131, 165n47
chaldaicum rerum quae in Sacris artisans, 11, 199, 217–19
Bibliis leguntur, 59; Miscellanea Asad, Talal, 192
de animalibus et plantis, 55; on Augenio, Orazio, 164, 231–2, 249n15
the natural history of papyrus, Augustine, 19, 38, 93–5;De doctrina
71–108; Pandechion epistemonicon, christiana, 19, 38, 107,
55; placed under house arrest on 146n145
suspicion of heresy, 105–8; De Avicenna, 94, 166–7, 205, 214
ritu sepeliendi, 65n96; Theatrum
biblicum naturale, 38–9, 107 Baccanelli, Giovanni Battista, 254n27
Alemanno, Yoh￶annan, 14 Bacchi, Cristina, 58n73
293
294 Index
Bacci, Andrea, 2, 3n8, 5, 17, 31, 141–6, Browne, Thomas, 34n123

152, 165, 232 Brucioli, Antonio, 28
Bah￶ya ibn Paqudah, 15, 92n65 Brunfels, Otto, 47
Balducci, Antonio, 106 Budé, Guillaume, 92, 124
Balmes, Abraham de, 149 Buoni, Giacomo Antonio, 191
baptism, 154, 174–7 burial customs, Jewish, 65–7
Barbaro, Ermolao, 46–8, 79 Burnett, Stephen, 72n6
Baron, Salo, 35 Burucúa, José Emilio, 53
Bartolini, Riccardo, 116 Buxtorf, Johannes, 124
Basel Talmud, 120n46
Bauhin, Caspar, 212 cabinets of curiosity, Renaissance
Bellarmine, Robert, 52, 58 interest in, 10–11
Belon, Pierre, 66 Calceolari, Francesco, 48
Benedict XIV (pope), 176 Calepino, Ambrogio, 123–4
Bertocci, Alfonso, 255n29 Calvin, John, 20
Beza, Theodor, 57n71 Calzolari, Francesco, 10, 225
Bible, Jewish education and the, 14–17 Campilongo, Emilio, 247n8
Bible translations, general Cangiamila, Francesco
(see also Vulgate Bible)1, Emanuello, 175–8
84–6; Greek, 7, 134 Canini, Angelo, 28
Bible, Deuterocannonical books, 84 Capellman, Karl Franz Nicholaus, 175
Bibliander, Théodor, 57n71 Capivaccio, Girolamo, 250n20
biblical commentary, Jewish, 22–4 Carafa, Antonio, 148
Blair, Ann, 24 Cardano, Girolamo, 21, 41, 138–9,
Blondheim, David, 134 141, 150, 221
Boccalini, Giovanni Francesco, 255n31 Cardoso, Fernando, 236–7
Bocchi, Zenobio, 220 Cares of Mitilene, 236
Bochart, Samuel, 36n132 Carlo Emanuele I, Duke of Piedmont
Bologna, 2, 33, 38, 69, 96–7, 105–6, Savoy, 34–5
148, 235, 237; University of, 8, Carmi, Abraham, 179
37, 172 Caro, Isaac, 25
Bomberg, Daniel, 23 Casaubon, Isaac, 64, 104, 184n117
Bonfil, Robert, 157–8 Cassola, Scipio, 156, 172n73, 255n31
Bos, Gerrit, 122 Cassuto, Umberto, 30
botanical gardens, 11, 47, 81, 218; Castro, Rodericus a, 21
in Bologna, 64; in Mantua, 220; in Castro, Stephanus Rodericus a, 233
Padua, 11, 31, 62, 71, 75, 87, 93–4, Catalano, Abraham, 12, 198n12
102–3; in Pisa, 62 Cathari, 175
botany, 30, 75, 79, 141, 198n13, 206, Cattaneo, Guglielmo, 254n28
220; scriptural, 42, 44, 60, 62, 195–6, Cavallara, Giovanni Battista, 2, 9, 35,
210, 229 153–4, 156, 163–5, 167–8, 180, 193
Bottazzo, Giovanni Iacopo, 248n12 Cavalli, Marino, 75
Bracciolini, Poggio, 29n113 Cavriani, Filippo, 247n10
bread in the ancient world, 111n7, 154, Celsus, 166–7
163–71 Chartier, René, 13
breastplate, high priest’s, 109, 112, 128, Chevalier, Antoine Rodolphe, 57n71, 58
130, 138, 140, 144, 150 Cicero, 84
Index 295
circumcision, 154, 161, 179, 183 de’ Pomi, David, 2, 5, 9, 11, 13, 16–17,
Claudino, Giulio Cesare, 246n1 19n113, 23, 24–6, 30–2, 35–6, 56,
Clusius, Carolus, 214, 215n67 109–52, 165, 194, 197, 232, 234,
Codronchi, Giovanni Battista, 236, 238
248n11 de’ Rossi, Azariah, 3n8, 17, 35, 57n71,
Cohen, Tobias, 26 92n64, 103n110, 146, 149, 151,
collecting and collections, Renaissance 191n137
interest in, 10–11, 31 de’ Sommi, Leone, 9n36
colleges of physicians, 9; Mantua, Dezza, Massimiliano, 177
Jewish members in, 9–10, 153, 193; dictionaries, 23, 116, 122–4
Venice, Jewish members in, 161–2 Di Gara, Zuan, 110
Collegio (Rome), 102 Dilg, Peter, 79, 220
Collegium Trilingue, Leuven, 28 Diocles of Carystus, 113n18
Colombo, Realdo, 187–92 Dionisotti, A. C., 116
commentary, Renaissance tradition Dioscorides, 7, 18, 31, 39, 42, 45–8,
of, 45–6 54–6, 60–2, 64–6, 69–70, 79, 81–2,
commonplace books, 238 199–200, 205–6, 209–14, 223–4,
complutensian polyglot (Biblia 230, 233
polyglotta), 52–3 disease in sixteenth century, 12, 155
consilia, Renaissance genre, Dolomite foothills, botanical
158–60, 163 expeditions in, 22, 64, 194, 236
Constantinople, 134 Donati, Marcello, 10, 156
Constantinus Africanus, 46 Driedo, Johannes, 52
conversos, 40, 54, 232 Drusius, Johannes, 70
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 26 Durante, Castor, 102–3
Cordus, Valerius, 47 Dweck, Yaacob, 117n36
Cortuso, Giacomo Antonio, 102–3
Cospi, Tommaso, 58 Egidio da Viterbo, 157
Costa, Filippo, 163n38, 220 Elzeario of Ariano, Saint, 177
courts, 9–10, 232 embryology, 153, 174; ancient versus
Crete, 133n97, 134 modern, 181–2, 188–91
Cujas, Jacques, 29 empiricism, 61–2, 213–14
Cyprus, fall of, 114; wine of, 242 encyclopedias, 23, 124, 238
Enlightenment, 4
Daléchamps, Jacques, 80 Epiphanius, 165–7
David ben Shmuel of Rosina, 14n57 Erasmus, Desiderius, 17–18, 27–8,
d’Étaples, Jacques Lefèvre, 52 52, 54
de Blanis, Angelo di Laudadio, 113n16 Ercole II, Duke of Ferrara, 41
deers’ tears (cervi lachrymae), 49–51,
55, 58 Fabrizi d’Aquapendente, Girolamo,
DeJob, Charles, 20, 96 156, 172n73, 246n4
de la Rue, Francois, 139–41 Fagius, Paul, 72
De Luna, Beatriz, 50 Fallopia, Gabriele, 75, 77, 96, 188
Delmedigo, Joseph, 14n59 Farissol, Abraham, 40n11, 42n23,
Delmedigo, Elijah, 158 202n24
de Orta, Garcia, 216 Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor,
de Panis, David, 33 48n39, 225, 251n17
296 Index
Fernel, Jean, 222 200–4, 207–9; study of in sixteenth

Ferrara, University of, 41 century, 5–7, 45, 48, 151–2; use in
fetal nourishment, 180–9 Renaissance medicine, 93
Ficino, Marsilio, 54, 58, 137–8 Greeks in Italy, sixteenth century, 133–4
Fioravanti, Leonardo, 172 Grendler, Paul, 28
Fiorentini, Girolamo, 177 Grimani, Domenico, 149
Fontani, Cristoforo Guetta, Alessandro, 195
Guarinoni, 254n24 Guilandinus, Melchior, 2, 5, 7, 11, 17,
Frederick III, Holy Roman 19, 31, 62, 165, 232, 234, 236–7;
Emperor, 16n65 on the natural history of papyrus,
Frigimelica, Franciscus, 47 71–108
Froza, Francesco, 162 Giustiniani, Agostino, 60n82
Fuchs, Leonhart, 13, 41 Gutwirth, Eleazar, 163
Funkenstein, Amos, 35
Ha-Levi, Judah, 15
Gaetano, Matthew, 96n87, 96n88 Hebrew language: Aldrovandi’s study
Galatino, Pietro, 231n7 and use of, 27, 55–60, 68, 74, 84–8,
Galen, 4, 5n13, 7, 45, 79, 144n137, 90, 98–99; Amatus’s study and use
166–7, 182, 185–6, 205, 214 of, 43–5, 54; David de’ Pomi’s use of,
Galeota da Urbino, Antonio, 116 114–15, 117–37, 150–1; Guilandinus’s
Galesini, Pietro, 20 use of, 74, 84–8, 90, 92; Portaleone’s
Garzoni, Tomasso, 165, 219–20 use of, 163, 168–71; scientific
Geiger, Abraham, 147 applications of, 29, 55–7; study of in
Gelenius, 91 sixteenth century, 28–9, 122–4
Gentilcore, David, 128 Hippocrates (including the Hippocratic
Gersonides, 15, 196 Corpus), 4, 45, 66, 164, 182, 235;
Gesner, Conrad, 47, 188 Colombo’s criticism of, 188–9;
Ghini, Luca, 11, 62, 236 Portaleone’s criticism of, 186–7
Giles of Viterbo, 54 Holy Roman Empire, 29
Gonzaga, ruling family of Homer, 88
Mantua, 9, 26, 161, 163n38, Horace, 45, 151
219–20; Guglielmo, 161, 220, 246n4,
250n16; Vincenzo I, 161, 197, 220, Imperato, Ferrante, 10
250n16, 254n25, 254n26 incense, 12, 22; Portaleone’s study of,
Graecus Venetus, 134 194–229
Grafton, Anthony, 71, 103, 159 Inquisition, 41, 104–6, 233
Grapaldus, Franciscus, 123 Index of Prohibited Books (including
Greek language: Aldrovandi’s use of, Index expurgatorius), 41–2
55, 57, 60–1, 74, 78–9, 83–6, 88–9, Isaac of Avila, 127
91, 99; Amatus Lusitanus’s use of, Israëls, A. H., 182
39, 43–4, 48; David de’ Pomi’s use Italian language (see vernacular writings)
of, 110, 115–18, 133–4, 151–2;
Guilandinus’s use of, 74, 78–9, 83–6, Jerome, 42–5, 52–4, 86–8, 93–5, 145–9,
88–9, 91, 95, 104; Leoniceno’s use 202n24 (see also Vulgate Bible)
of, 78–83; Portaleone’s use of, 180, Jesus, burial of, 67
184–5, 200–4, 207–9, 211, 230, Jewish-Christian relations in
239; rabbinic familiarity with, 182, Mantua, 162
Index 297
Johanna of Austria, 48, 250n17 Maimonides, 15, 84–5, 203, 208,

John of Damascus, 139 227, 228
Jonah ibn Janah, 130 Manardo, Giovanni, 48
Josephus: Antiquities, 88–9, 91, 142; Manetti, Gianozzo, 28
Against Apion, 88 manna, 22, 63, 64, 66–7, 194, 235–6
Julius Caesar, 58 Mantua, Duchy of, 2, 32
Julius III (pope), 41 Manuel, Frank, 157
Justinian, 29 Manutius, Aldus, 6, 46
Marini, Marco, 28, 29n113, 119,
Kelley, Donald, 25 120, 143
kikayon (gourd), 11, 93–6 Martial, 161n28
Kimh￶i, David, 90, 110n4, 123, 125, Massa, Apollonio, 161
129–31 Massa, Lorenzo, 121–2
Kircher, Athanasius, 28 Massaria, Alessandro, 148n14
Kottek, Samuel, 195 Massorah, 24
Matteucci, Girolamo, 111
Laguna, Andreas, 47, 233 Mattioli, Piero Andrea, 6, 13, 47–8, 76,
Lampronti, Isaac, 199n16 102, 209–10, 212, 215–16, 224–5
Lange, Joseph, 161n28, 256n32 Maturanzio, Francesco, 116
lapidaries, Hebrew, 131–5; Latin, Mauroceno, Giovanni, 223
135–40, 151 Medical education, sixteenth
La Sapienza (University of Rome), 28, century, 4–8
141, 145 medical commentaries, sixteenth
Latini, Latino, 20 century, 69–70
law, stance toward tradition in medical pluralism, 12
Renaissance, 5 Medicine, stance toward tradition in
Le Goff, Jacques, 232 Renaissance, 4–5
Lehoux, Françoise, 13 Melanchthon, Philipp, 27
Leo X (pope), 1 Melchiori, Giovanni Odorico, 210
Leon, Jacob Judah Aryeh (Judah del Mendes da Costa, Emanuel, 162
Templo), 34n122 Mercuriale, Girolamo, 8–9, 76, 151,
Leoniceno, Niccolò, 48, 77n21, 154n2, 156, 160, 164,
78–83, 104 245, 247n5
Lepusculus, Sebastian, 72n6 Messer Leon, David, 16
Levita, Elia, 124–5, 129–30, 157 Messer Leon, Judah, 15–16
Linguardo, Francesco, 105 Michiel, Pietro Antonio, 76
Livy, 84 Midrash, 147, 181, 204
Lollino, Luigi, 75–6 Mikhtav ah￵uz (see Delmedigo, Joseph)
Lombardo, Giovanni Francisco, 142 mikra’ot gedolot (see Rabbinic Bible)
López de Gómara, Francisco, Miletto, Gianfranco, 195, 199
214n64 Miller, Peter, 195
Luther, Martin, 20 Minadoi, Giovanni Tomasso, 247n6
mineralogy, 30
Maclean, Ian, 5, 8, 160 miracles in Bible, explained by natural
Magno, Alessandro, 2, 9, 35, 153–4, philosophy, 67
156, 171–5, 177–9, 180, 184, 186–7, Mishnah, 72
189, 193 Modena, Leone da, 17, 35, 120n46
298 Index
Monardes, Nicolás, 215 Pampuri, Stefano, 247n9

monstrous births, 172–80 Pansa, Mutio, 101–3
Montpellier, University of, 8 Panvinio, Onofrio, 101n101
morbus gallicus, 12 papyrus, 71–108
Moses ben Eliahu Galina, 132–3 Paris, University of, 8
Mugnai Carrara, Daniela, 83 Park, Katherine, 12
Münster, Sebastian, 42–5, 59–61, 69, Passover, Jewish festival, 72, 154,
124, 129 166, 168–9
museums (see cabinets of curiosity; Patricius, Andreas, 93
collecting and collections) patristics, 19–20, 83, 141, 145–6
music and musical instruments, 62 Paul of Aegina, 79, 82, 166–7, 208
Paul IV (pope), 153n1
Nah￶manides, Moses, 24, 182, 202, Paul V (pope), 176
203n28, 207–8 Pavia, University of, 5
Naples, Kingdom of, 32–3 Peretti, Alessandro, 142
Nathan ben Yeh￶iel of Rome, 92, 122, Perles, Joseph, 134
124–5, 129 Perrat, Charles, 71
natural philosophy, value placed by Perugia, University of, 5, 113,
Jews on, 15–17 116, 152
Nebiensis Heptaplus, 60 Pescarolo, David Samuel, 179
Netherlands, 29 pharmacists, 10, 12, 32, 47, 111, 199,
Niccoli, Niccolò, 29n113 211, 219, 220, 222–3
Nicholas of Lyra, 18, 52, 232n7 Phillip II, 233
Noah’s ark, 65; wood used to build, 87 Philo, 91–2
Novoa, James Nelson, 233n11 Picchino, Giulio, 164
Nutton, Vivian, 83 Piccolomini, Francesco, 76
Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco, 2,
Olivieri, Serafino, 231–2 230; Giovanni, 158
Olmi, Giuseppe, 160 Pirke Avot, 72
Oribasius, 166–7 Pitigliano, 33
Origen, 51 pitom qetoret (see incense)
Orsini, Roman family, 33; Franciotto, Pius IV (pope), 197
33n120; Fulvio, 20; Niccolò IV, 33 plague, 12, 111–13, 125, 127–8, 131,
Ottoman Empire, 25 133, 136, 138–40, 143, 150, 198; of
Ovid, 18 1571–2, 12, 26, 152; of 1630, 35
Pliny the Elder, 18, 31, 49, 56, 62, 64,
Padua, University of, 5, 7–8, 11, 26, 70, 199, 206, 212, 223; discussion
62, 75–6, 87, 93, 96, 102, 163n38, of bread, 165–6, 170–1; discussion
198, 214, 245, 246n3, 247n6, 247n8, of papyrus, 71–108; Renaissance
249n14, 256n32 debates about, 77–83
Pagnini, Sante, 1–2, 28, 52, 54, 59, 94, poetics, 17
124, 143 Poliziano, Angelo, 81, 160
Paleotti, Alfonso, 37–8 Pona, Giovanni Battista, 251n22
Paleotti, Camillo, 63–4, 96–7, 235 Pontio, Nicolao, 256n32
Paleotti, Gabriele, 7, 19, 38–9, 58, Porret, Christiaen, 217n73
63–4, 104, 106–7, 121, 148, 235 Portaleone, Abraham, 2, 3n8, 4n11,
Palmer, Richard, 111 5, 9, 11, 17, 22–6, 30, 31–3, 35–6,
Index 299
123, 129, 134–6, 143, 150–1, 154, Romance languages, rabbinic

177–9, 180–90, 192–3, 194–229, familiarity with, 205–6
230, 232, 234, 236, 238–9; approval Rondolet, Guillaume, 219n80
of Spanish and Portuguese travelers, Rosario, Stanislao, 87
211, 214–16; David ben Abraham, Rossi, Girolamo, 46
156, 172, 245; criticism of ancient Roth, Cecil, 115, 119, 157
rabbis, 198–211; criticism of ancient rhetoric, 17
scientific texts, 235–8; criticism of Ruderman, David, 162
Isaac Abravanel, 205–9; criticism Rudio, Eustachio, 246n2
of Hippocrates, 182, 186–7, 189; Rufus of Ephesus, 184–6
criticism of medieval rabbis, 196; rural life, Jews and, 33
Responsorum et consultationum
medicinalium Liber (Book of medical Saadiah Gaon, 202
responses and consultations), Salamanca, University of, 8, 29, 40
155–74, 245–6 Salomone di Benigno Turani di Orvieto,
Postel, Guillaume, 57n71 113n16
Premuda, Loris, 76 Samlai, Rabbi, 180–4, 188, 190
Preuss, Julius, 181–2 Samuel ben Hophni, 94
Privat, Ponce, 13 Samuel da Lima, 245, 252n21
protestant reformation, 27 Sanches, Francisco, 219n80
Provenzali, Abraham, 151n173, 245–6; Saravallo, Jacobo, 245
David ben Abraham and Abraham, Sassi, Cristoforo, 116
Jewish academy of, 14; Jacob ben Scaliger, Joseph, 18, 103–4
David, 16; Moses, 134–5, 151, Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 58
202n23 Schato, Andreas, 161n28, 249n13
Ptolemy Philadelphus, 73–4 Sea of Reeds vs. Red Sea, 86–7, 98
psalms, textual criticism of, 49–51 Sefer Nofet Ẓufim (see Messer Leon,
Judah)
Rabbenu Tam, 169 Selden, John, 184n117
Rabbinic Bible, 23–4, 40n11, 60n83 Selim II, 114
rabbis, scientific knowledge of, 181–5 Septuagint, 84–6, 88–91, 93, 102–3,
Rashi, 23, 169, 196, 202, 205, 115, 148, 151. See also bible
210, 231 translations, Greek
Raymondus Martinus, 52 Serapion, 94, 136–8, 214
Raz Krakotzkin, Amon, 171n71 Sforno, Ovadiah, 22, 57, 196
Rebiba, Scipione, 106 Shapiro, Barbara, 224
Recanati, Menah￶em, 24 Shuger, Deborah, 29
res et verba, 80 Siegmund, Stephanie, 157
Reuchlin, Johann, 27, 58 Sigonio, Carlo, 237
Reuveni, David, 14n57 Simeon ben Gamliel, 203–4
Riccoboni, Antonio, 76, 256n32 Siraisi, Nancy, 66n99, 159–61,
Rieti, Gratiadio, 180, 184 186n124, 190n134
Riolan, Jean (the Elder), 21 Sirleto, Guglielmo, 20
ritual purity, in Jewish law, 180 Sixtus V (pope), 13, 111, 141, 145
rituale romanum, 176 Sixtus Senensis, 148
Rocca, Angelo, 101 Solomon’s Temple, 65, 195, 197,
Roger, Jacques, 192 199, 222
300 Index
Spanish and Portuguese physicians, Valier, Agostino, 149n164

sixteenth century, 232–7 Valla, Lorenzo, 52
Spanish language, 40, 47 Vallés, Francisco, 233–7
Starnes, DeWitt, 123 Varro, 74, 89–90, 114
Steinschneider, Moritz, 149 Venice, 2, 11–13, 15, 23, 25, 32–3, 35,
Steuchus, Augustinus, 28, 143, 148 39, 41, 50, 63, 109, 110–11, 113, 133,
Stimigliano, 33 151–2, 161–2; Jewish ghetto in, 179
Strabo, 206, 214 Vergilio, Marcello, 47
Suleiman, Ottoman sultan, 225 veritas filia temporis, 21
Symmachus, 147–50 vernacular writings, medical reliance
syphilis (see morbus gallicus) on, 11
Syriac language: Aldrovandi’s use of, Vesalius, Andreas, 5, 188, 218
27, 59; Guilandinus’s use of, 94 Vetus Latina, 51, 93
Vielmi, Girolamo, 7, 19, 77, 96
talmud, 13, 92, 150, 155, 163, 166, “Vienna Dioscorides,” 46
168, 171, 174, 179, 180–5, 190, 193, Vigonza, Alessandro, 246n3
196, 199–201, 203–5, 225–7; tractate Virgil, 45
Pesahim, 169–70 Vitruvius, 63–4
targum/targumim, 92 Vives, Juan Luis, 218
Ta Shema, Israel, 122 Vulgate Bible (see also Bible
tarshish (stone), 13, 109–52 translations), 7, 42–5, 51–4, 74,
ten commandments, inscription of, 72 84–90, 93, 104, 143, 145–6
Textor, Benedictus, 47
Theodotion, 149 Waldenses (heresy), 175
Theophrastus, 7, 18, 45, 56, 62, 82, Weidner, Paul, 72n6
199, 203, 205–6, 211–12, 214, Weinberg, Joanna, 17, 151
223, 230 Wieland, Melchior (see Guilandinus,
Thevet, André, 214n63 Melchior)
Torresani, Francesco, 46 Worm, Ole, 217n75
Trent, Council of, 20, 51, 53, 63–4,
175, 197, 225 Yagel, Abraham, 2, 12, 111n7, 143, 159
Tsemah￵ David / Dittionario novo
(David de’ Pomi), 31, 108–52 Zabarella, Jacopo, 76
Trinkaus, Charles, 27 Zecchi, Giovanni, 250n18
Zifroni, Israel, 120–1
Ugolini, Blasio, 36n132, 238 Zifroni, Moses Elishama ben Israel, 194
Urban V (pope), 178 zoology, 31, 220
Urban VII (pope), 64 Zwinger, Theodor, 154n2, 160

The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy Jewish and Christian Physicians in Search of Truth

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What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What arguments does the book make?

What arguments does the book make?

The Bible and Natural Philosophy in

Andrew D. Berns is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Acknowledgments page vii

A Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Names ix

1 “This Is What King David Meant”: Amatus Lusitanus and

2 Pliny, Papyrus, and the Bible 71

3 “The Grandeur of the Science of God”: David de’ Pomi

4 Jewish-Christian Relations in Sixteenth-Century Italy:

5 “I Seek the Truth from Whomever Pronounces It”:

Appendix I. The Ancient Israelite Incense Mixture 241

Appendix II. Ulisse Aldrovandi and Hebrew 243

Appendix III. The Index to Portaleone’s Responsorum et

I would like to thank the following individuals: Nadja Aksamija, Maria

I am grateful to these institutions for their support: History Department,

All translations, unless otherwise specified, are my own. Translations

Pagnini’s comparison of scientific and scriptural translation was not

turn, helped settle disputes in learned natural philosophy and improve

terminology in the Bible. The quest to find the “true meaning” of

Medical Culture in Late Renaissance Italy

criticized him.13 Medicine’s flexible stance toward the authority of tradi-

Manutius had established the Neakademia, a “new academy” devoted to

The emphasis on Greek in Renaissance medical education inspired

the medical profession. In the sixteenth century, Italian universities such

the affection between the two men.34 Another of Mercuriale’s corre-

had Jewish members.37 Mantua’s court and College of Physicians enabled

specimens physicians collected were understood as the equivalents – and

read religious literature in times of contagion; a few put it directly to

The Bible and Medicine in Late Renaissance Italy

more abundant and detailed: curricula from Jewish primary schools,

of natural philosophy was especially praised: “He seems truly learned,”

philosophy swelled, and the scope of their investigations expanded. One

A patristic revival was one reason a diverse group of Italian scholars

Certain features of sixteenth-century medicine, when applied to the

medicine encouraged physicians to adopt a critical stance toward received

Biblical Commentary in Jewish and Catholic

may be found in other genres as well, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias,

was not.96 The medieval commentaries included represent a sampling, and

A flood of late antique and medieval commentaries on the Bible was

be profitably understood in this way as well. When Portaleone treated

demonstrated how biblical studies were an outgrowth of Renaissance

Similarly, Hebrew studies flourished in Spain, at places like Salamanca

zoology, and alimentation. However, those topical groupings are merely

For Abraham Portaleone, one of David de’ Pomi’s coreligionists and

miscellany in Florence’s Biblioteca Laurenziana contains the letters of a

biblical products. In a way, little remained to be done after scholars

a destabilizing war with France. Carlo Emanuele also laid claim to

they wished to revise scriptural translations or create new a­ pplications

“This Is What King David Meant”

Amatus Lusitanus and Ulisse Aldrovandi

Amatus Lusitanus: Medical Commentary and the Bible

productive years on the Italian Peninsula. In 1540 Amatus was invited

of them – his medical training conditioned him to do that.31 What is

establishing accurate editions and readable, faithful translations. Their

scholars. As an expert on sixteenth-century medical humanism put it,

materia medica. The prefatory epistles to Mattioli’s Dioscorides provide

they wished to revise scriptural translations or create new a pplications

passages in Cicero and Livy concerning the use of writing implements

come to his museum, but few enjoyed Arias Montano’s international

Padua, where he succeeded Guilandinus, and he had a degree in m edicine.

antiquarian and medical aspects of biblical gemstones. His responsibilities