Delmedigo, Elijah (c.1460–93)

Throughout the treatises and translations commissioned by his many patrons in Italy, Elijah Delmedigo championed Aristotle and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). In Latin texts prepared for Pico della Mirandola, Delmedigo affirmed such cardinal Averroist notions as the absolute unity of all human minds and the role of God as the unmeditated principle of intelligibility in the universe. In the Hebrew Behinat ha-Dat (The Examination of Religion), Delmedigo urges the superiority of a rationalistic Judaism over other religions, especially Christianity, and over the nonphilosophic, improperly philosophic and antiphilosophic versions of Judaism. Sections of this work amount to a nuanced critique of Kabbalah. Combining ardent Averroism with qualified admiration for Maimonides, Delmedigo repeatedly argued for the compatibility of Judaism with secular philosophic speculation.