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. He moved to
Perugia and taught classes in "radical Aristotelianism," that is, heavily interpreted with the ideas of
Averroes and other Islamic commentators. Del Medigo became quite well known as a major
Averroist in Italy. While in Perugia, he met
Pico della Mirandola, and wrote two pamphlets for him. Another important student of del Medigo's at that time was
Domenico Grimani, a Venetian, who eventually became the
Cardinal of
San Marco. Grimani proved to be a consistent patron, and with his encouragement, del Medigo wrote several manuscripts which received wide distribution among Italian philosophers. He stayed in close contact with
Pico della Mirandola, traveling to
Florence, the site of
Marsilio Ficino's Platonic Academy, to give classes and to translate manuscripts from Hebrew to Latin for Pico. In the end, however, Del Medigo was no
Kabbalist, and he became disenchanted with the
syncretic direction Pico and his colleagues were moving in, a tendency to combine concepts of magic,
Hermeticism and
Kabbalah with
Plato and
Neoplatonism. In addition to his increasing disappointment with Pico, he was somewhat discredited himself by the backlash from Pico's imprisonment and the interdiction by the Vatican of his 900 Theses. Furthermore, tension arose between del Medigo and the Italian Jewish community over his secular intellectual interests and his associations with gentile scholars. As a consequence of the financial difficulties he experienced in the wake of Pico's disfavor, del Medigo decided to leave Italy for good. He went back to Crete, where he spent the last years of his life. During this period, del Medigo returned to Jewish thought, writing the
Sefer Bechinat Ha-dath for his students, in which he clarified his disagreement with the magical and Kabbalistic theories that inspired Pico's
Oration on the Dignity of Man, and expounded his belief that a human being cannot aspire to become a god, and that
Judaism requires that a man must "fight for rationality, sobriety and the realization of [his] human limitations." Delmedigo argued against the antiquity of the Kabbalah, noting that it was not known to the sages of the Talmud, or to the geonim, or to
Rashi. He also denies that
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was the author of the
Zohar, since that work mentions people who lived after the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. In addition, he attacks the esoteric allegorists among Jewish philosophers. In another section of his work Delmedigo discusses the intellectual reasoning underlying the commandments of Torah (ta'amei ha-mitzvot). His descendant
Joseph Solomon Delmedigo was a famous rabbi, philosopher and a staunch defender of the Kabbalah. ==Popular culture==