XO54 Las excelencias de los Hebreos

Isaac Cardoso, Las excelencias de los Hebreos (Amsterdam : En casa de David de Castro Tartas, 1679)

Library at the Katz Center, Rare Book Room BM648 .C37 1679

Isaac Cardoso (d. 1683) was the son of Jewish parents who had been forced to convert to Catholicism. After studying medicine and achieving success in Spain, he left the Iberian Peninsula for Italy, where he reembraced the Jewish faith and wrote apologetic works to defend his co-religionists. Las excelencias de los Hebreos praised traits that characterize Jewish people, while responding to slanders launched against them. In this chapter, Cardoso celebrates the intellectual excellence of the Jews, referring to a legend according to which Aristotle himself would have converted to Judaism. The legend emerged from the Jewish milieu, to create an association with the great thinker, exploiting his reputation to exalt Judaic wisdom. Christian thinkers appropriated the legend through various channels to demonstrate Aristotle’s monotheism and the philosopher’s compatibility with their faith. Cardoso here mentions the Paduan professor Fortunio Liceti – an adversary of Galileo – who revitalized the legend in his De pietate Aristotelis (On the piety of Aristotle, 1645).