Elia del Medigo

Elia del Medigo, also called Elijah Delmedigo or Elias ben Moise del Medigo and sometimes known to his contemporaries as Helias Hebreus Cretensis or in Hebrew Elijah Mi-Qandia (c. 1458 – c. 1493). According to Jacob Joshua Ross, "while the non-Jewish students of Delmedigo may have classified him as an “Averroist”, he clearly saw himself as a follower of Maimonides". But, according to other scholars, Delmedigo was clearly a strong follower of Averroes' doctrines, even the more radical ones: unity of intellect, eternity of the world, autonomy of reason from the boundaries of revealed religion.

Born in Candia, on the island of Crete, (at that time was under the control of the Venetian Republic), whither his family had emigrated from Germany, he spent ten years in Rome and in Padua in northern Italy, returning to Candia at the end of his life.

He is remembered for a number of translations, commentaries on Averroes (Ibn Rushd in Arabic) (notably a commentary on Averroes' Substantia Orbis in 1485), for his influence on many Italian Platonists of the early Renaissance (especially Giovanni Pico della Mirandola), and for his treatise on Jewish philosophy, Sefer Beḥinat ha-Dat (The Examination of Religion), published many years after his death, in 1629.

Del Medigo had a traditional religious upbringing in Candia, demonstrating considerable breadth. In addition to rabbinic learning, he studied philosophy, and had a good knowledge of Italian, Greek, as well as Latin and Hebrew. It is likely that he also studied medicine, and it may have been with that intention that he originally went to Padua, where the University was the most important center for traditional Aristotelian philosophy in Italy. By 1480, he was in Venice, where he wrote Quaestio utrum mundus sit effectus, and supported himself by giving classes in Aristotelian philosophy attended by the sons of wealthy and important families.

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