the european renaissance and the new world 367
the Hebrew history of Yosippon constituted in fact an unreliable para-
phrase of the Greek text of Josephus as preserved by the Church. In
keeping with the spirit of enquiry of humanist scholarship, de’ Rossi
used evidence from any source he could find, including the writings on
Jewish history by the fourth- century Church historian Eusebius and
other ancient Christian writings. He even made use of the theology of
Thomas Aquinas and other medieval Christian theologians and the
Christian kabbalist Pico della Mirandola, whose methods of scholar-
ship he admired.
A critical approach to stories in the Talmud was not in itself a novelty
in Jewish thought, but de’ Rossi’s use of non- Jewish sources for the pur-
pose was, and publication of The Light of the Eyes provoked strong
protests. The issue lay not in de’ Rossi’s religious teachings, which con-
formed (as did his personal behaviour) to rabbinic norms of piety. More
problematic was the implication of his scholarly enquiry that wisdom
from outside the rabbinic tradition could be used not just to amplify
and elucidate that tradition in the manner of medieval Jewish philos-
ophers in their use of Islamic writings but, far more fundamentally, to
challenge that tradition. In 1574, the rabbis of Venice proclaimed a ban
against anyone who used the book without special permission from
them, and similar bans were prepared not only in many parts of Italy
but also in Safed in Palestine. Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague,
devoted a large part of his book Be’ er‑ haGolah, published in 1598, to a
direct attack on de’ Rossi’s teachings, even though he was writing some
twenty years after de’ Rossi had died. For over a century de’ Rossi’s
work was read only surreptitiously – even in Mantua, where the book
was printed, it was permitted only to those aged over twenty- five,
deemed able to deal with the potential perils of his doctrines. In many
respects de’ Rossi had trodden carefully by avoiding any criticism of the
Bible and by confining himself to technical scholarly issues such as the
chronology of ancient Jewish history, using an approach to the sacred
text similar to contemporary Christian scholars in the Renaissance. The
strength of opposition he evoked is testimony to the awareness of con-
temporaries that opening up customary teaching to scrutiny in relation
to external literary authorities in this way might prove immensely dan-
gerous to those concerned to preserve the integrity of the tradition.^7
Despite his extensive fame (or notoriety), de’ Rossi never held a
rabbinic post and he promulgated his ideas as, in essence, a solitary
figure – even some of his closer friends deserted him when confronted
by the scale of opposition he provoked and his apparently cavalier