Joseph Solomon Delmedigo

From the frontispiece to his "Sefer Elim."

Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (or Del Medigo), also known as Yashar Mi-Qandia (Hebrew: יש"ר מקנדיא; 16 June 1591 – 16 October 1655), was a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist.^[1]

Born in Candia, Crete, a descendant of Elia del Medigo, Joseph Solomon or Yashar Mi-Qandia is a member of Del Medigo de'Candia lineage from the Geiger family of Germany that settled first in Crete and then in Italy.^[2]^[3] Eventually, he moved to Padua, Italy, studying medicine and taking classes with Galileo Galilei in astronomy. After graduating in 1613 he moved to Venice and spent a year in the company of Leon de Modena and Simone Luzzatto. From Venice he went back to Candia and from there started traveling in the near East, reaching Alexandria and Cairo. There he went into a public contest in mathematics against a local mathematician. From Egypt he moved to Istanbul, there he observed the comet of 1619. After Istanbul he wandered along the Karaite communities in Eastern Europe, finally arriving at Amsterdam in 1623. He died in Prague, just before turning 65 after a celebration of lights at the Staronová synagoga. Yet in his lifetime wherever he sojourned he earned his living as a physician and or teacher. His only known works are Elim (Palms), dealing with mathematics, astronomy, the natural sciences, and metaphysics, as well as some letters and essays.

As Delmedigo writes in his book, he followed the lectures by Galileo Galilei, during the academic year 1609–1610, and was accorded the rare privilege of using Galileo's own telescope. In the following years he often refers to Galilei as "rabbi Galileo," an ambiguous phrase which may simply mean "my master, Galileo." (Delmedigo never calls him "our teacher and master, Rabbi Galileo," which would be the typical way of referring to an actual rabbi.) Elijah Montalto, physician of Maria de Medici, is also mentioned as one of his teachers.

^ Yashar is an acronym that includes both his two Hebrew initials, Yosef Shlomo, and his profession, rofe ('physician'). Yashar from Candia (יש"ר מקנדיה) is also a Hebrew pun, since Yashar means straight, as in 'the straight [man] from Candia'. The drawing (reproduced above to the right) on the frontispiece of his only printed work gives his name simply as Ioseph Del Medico 'Cretensis', or 'Joseph [of] the Physician, from Crete, Philosopher and Physician'. It is hard to determine which of the two, the family name Delmedigo on the one hand or the profession (physician), existed in the first place, giving origin to the other. The Hebrew title page to Sefer Elim gives his occupations specifically as a "complete" rabbi (shalem; this may mean that he had some sort of official smicha), philosopher, physician, and "nobleman" (aluf).
^ Eliahu del Medigo, the Last Averroist, by Josep Puig Montada, EXCHANGE AND TRANSMISSION ACROSS CULTURAL BOUNDARIES 2005, The Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ISBN 978-965-208-188-9
^ Geiger family Archive, 1874, founders of Reform Judaism. See ‘Ibn Rushd al-ḥafîdh,’ in J. L. Delgado (ed.), Biblioteca de al-Andalus, IV, Almeria 2006, no. 1006, pp. 517– 617; and Ludwig Geiger, Abraham Geiger: Leben und Werk für ein Judentum in der Moderne, Berlin 2001.

[1] Yashar is an acronym that includes both his two Hebrew initials, Yosef Shlomo, and his profession, rofe ('physician'). Yashar from Candia (יש"ר מקנדיה) is also a Hebrew pun, since Yashar means straight, as in 'the straight [man] from Candia'. The drawing (reproduced above to the right) on the frontispiece of his only printed work gives his name simply as Ioseph Del Medico 'Cretensis', or 'Joseph [of] the Physician, from Crete, Philosopher and Physician'. It is hard to determine which of the two, the family name Delmedigo on the one hand or the profession (physician), existed in the first place, giving origin to the other. The Hebrew title page to Sefer Elim gives his occupations specifically as a "complete" rabbi (shalem; this may mean that he had some sort of official smicha), philosopher, physician, and "nobleman" (aluf).

[2] Eliahu del Medigo, the Last Averroist, by Josep Puig Montada, EXCHANGE AND TRANSMISSION ACROSS CULTURAL BOUNDARIES 2005, The Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ISBN 978-965-208-188-9

[3] Geiger family Archive, 1874, founders of Reform Judaism. See ‘Ibn Rushd al-ḥafîdh,’ in J. L. Delgado (ed.), Biblioteca de al-Andalus, IV, Almeria 2006, no. 1006, pp. 517– 617; and Ludwig Geiger, Abraham Geiger: Leben und Werk für ein Judentum in der Moderne, Berlin 2001.

[1]

[2]

[3]