Élie del Medigo

Élie del Medigo (also called Elijah Delmedigo , and known by some of its contemporaries under the name of Helias Cretensis ), born towards 1458 and died towards 1493, is generally regarded as the large last averroïste Jewish.

Born in Candie (today Héraklion), on the island of Crete, which was at the time under the control of the République of Venice, Élie del Medigo spent then ten years to Rome and to Italy of North; it turned over to finish its days with Candie. Its family had emigrated there at the beginning of the 14th century after having left Germany.

Author of several translations and comments of Averroès, it exerted a notable influence on certain Italian philosophers of the beginning of the Rebirth, in particular Pic of Mirandole and the other Platonic ones of Florence, and composed a treaty of Jewish Philosophie, the Sefer Bechinat ha-dath (in French: Research on the religion ) which was published only in 1629, a long time after its death.

In Crete, Del Medigo is high in the Jewish religion, and studies, in addition to rabbinical teaching, philosophy, Arabic, the Greek, Latin and Hebrew. It is probable that it also studied medicine, and it is perhaps to supplement its knowledge in this field that he goes to Padoue, whose university was at the time the great center of philosophy aristotelician in Italy. In 1480, it is with Venice, where it writes Quaestio utrum mundus sit effectus , and provides for its requirements by giving courses for philosophy to the children for the easiest families.

It then goes to Perugia, and continuous to give courses of “radical aristotelism”, i.e. resting mainly on the comments of Averroès - Del Medigo was very familiar of its works - and other Moslem commentators. It is quickly known like one of largest the averroïstes of Italy; it in Perugia that it meets Pic of Mirandole, and is requested by the latter, it writes two lampoons.

Domenico Grimani, future cardinal, is also his pupil at that time; thereafter, it is used as patron in Del Medigo, and contributes to the diffusion of its writings. Del Medigo goes then to Florence, where the Platonic Academy of Marsile Ficin is, to teach and make translations of Hebrew to Latin at the request of Peak of Mirandole - however, the two philosophers never collaborated on a manuscript.

Del Medigo, not being a kabbalist, disapproves the syncretic orientation taken by Pic of Mirandole and those which surrounded it, in which they tried to reconcile, the Magie, the Hermétisme and the Kabbale with Plato and the Néoplatonisme. The tensions which opposed it to the Italian Jewish community on the subject, inter alia, of its collaboration with academics not-Jews; it is for that, but also because of financial problems, which it ends up leaving Italy, turning over to Crete.

During its last years, Del Medigo turns over to the Jewish thought, and writes the Sefer Be' hinat Hadat for its pupils, clearing up its dissensions with the magic and kabbalistic theories which inspire the Speech on the dignity of the man of Peak of Mirandole, and developing its thesis according to which the man cannot aspire to becoming a god, but that on the contrary, the Judaism requires that the man “fight for rationality, the sobriety and the realization of his human limits”.

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