Jacob Mantino ben Samuel

Jacob Mantino ben Samuel (also known as Mantinus) (died 1549) was a Jewish-Italian physician, translator, and scholar.

His parents—and perhaps Mantino himself—were natives of Tortosa, Spain, which place they left at the time of the banishment of the Jews from Spain (1492). Mantino studied medicine and philosophy at the universities of Padua and Bologna. Having graduated, he established himself at the latter place, and devoted his hours of leisure to the translation of scientific works from Hebrew into Latin. By these translations he soon acquired a high reputation, and he was befriended by the highest dignitaries of the court of Pope Clement VII.

A page from 1524 Arabic-Hebrew-Latin dictionary by Jacob Mantino and Leo Africanus.

The war of 1527 compelled Mantino to leave the Pontifical States. He settled at Verona, where the new bishop, Gian Matteo Giberti, protected him. In 1528, when Giberti left Verona for Rome, Mantino decided to settle at Venice, where the Council of Ten exempted him from wearing the Judenhut. This privilege was granted him, at first for a term of several months, upon the recommendation of the French and English ambassadors, the papal legate, and other dignitaries whom he numbered among his patients. At the expiration of the prescribed term Mantino found an influential protector in another of his patients, Teodoro Trivulzio, marshal of France and governor of Genoa; the latter, urging his own services to the Venetian Republic, insisted that the council should make the exemption perpetual.

The efforts of Henry VIII of England to annul the marriage with his wife Catherine on the pretext that their it was contrary to the Biblical law, and that the dispensation obtained from Pope Julius II was invalid, involved Mantino in difficulties. Henry sent Richard Croke to Italy in order to obtain opinions favorable to his case, that will enable to release him from levirate duties, and the latter addressed himself to Jewish as well as to Christian scholars. Pope Clement VII, in his turn, consulted Mantino, who decided against Henry. This decision created for Mantino many enemies in Venice, where Croke had won a favorable opinion from the famous physician and scholar Elijah Menahem Halfon, among others.[1]

Meanwhile, the Messianic dreamer Solomon Molcho, whom Mantino had energetically opposed while he was in Venice, went to Rome, followed by Mantino. Having many friends and protectors at the court of Clement VII, Mantino soon acquired great influence in Rome, which he employed in crushing Molcho. Mantino attained the zenith of his influence at the accession to the throne of Pope Paul III (1534), who appointed him his physician. This high position did not prevent Mantino from concerning himself with the affairs of the Jewish community of Rome, in whose records he appears as a member of the rabbinate, with the title "gaon." In 1544, for some unknown reason, Mantino returned to Venice, where again he was exempted from wearing the Jews' hat. Five years later he accompanied, as physician, the Venetian ambassador to Damascus, where he died soon after his arrival.

Writings

Mantino translated philosophical and medical text mainly of the Aristotelian tradition, on which he worked since the early 1520s. Some had first been printed separately, and others were first published shortly after his death, along with republications of the early editions, in a 11-volume edition of Aristotle and Averroes, the most complete one to date (Guinta brothers=Iuntas, Venice, 1550-1552).[2][3]

Mantino worked from earlier translations, that were made in the 13th-14th centuries from Arabic to Hebrew, by Jewish scholars.[4] More recently, Elia del Medigo made some translations into Latin. But Greek manuscripts of Aristotle's works have since been discovered and independently translated in Italy, and the texts could be compared with Averroes' citations. Mantino was among those who tried to reconcile Averroes' citations and interpretations, with the Greek Aristotle, by "fixing" and expanding the text. The efforts did not impress later readers however;[5][6] the interest in Averroism as a systematic philosophical school dwindled shortly after the two Giunta editions.[7][8]

  • Paraphrasis Auerrois Cordubensis philosophorum facile: principis: de partibus & generatione animalium ... (in Latin). per magistrum Marcelum Silber alis Franck. 1521. [Paraphrase on "Parts of Animals" and "Generation of Animals"] (dedicated to Pope Leo X.; Rome, 1521)
  • Auerois Paraphrasis super libros de republica Platonis, nunc primùm latinitate donata, Iacob Mantino medico Hebraeo interprete [Paraphrase of Plato's "Republic"]. Impressum Romae in Campo Florae: Per M. Valerium Doric. & Ludouicum, fratres brixianos. 1539. (Dedicated to Pope Paul III, 1st edition Rome 1539; reprinted by Giunta, 1550/2)[9]
  • commentary (the compendium) on Aristotle's "Metaphysics"
  • proem to book XII of Aristotle's "Metaphysics"
  • the "middle commentaries" on parts of the medieval "Organon": Porphyry's "Isagoge", and Aristotle's "Categories", "On Interpretation" (books I-IV), of "Topics", "Posterior Aanalytics" and "Poetics" (Venice, 1550)
    • Supercommentaries of Gersonides on Averroes’s Middle Commentaries on Aristotelian logic
  • proem to the large commentary on Aristotle's "Physics"
  • Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s "On the soul"
  • the long commentary on Aristotle's "On the soul", book III, chapters 5, 36. (1521 and in Giunta 1550/2)
  • the "middle commentary" on Aristotle's "Physics" (books I-III)

He also translated:

  • Averroes' medical work "Colliget" ("Kullayot")
  • Avicenna:

References

  1. ^ Katz, David S. (1994). "The Jewish Advocates of Henry VIII's Divorce". The Jews in the history of England, 1485-1850. Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-822912-4.
  2. ^ volumes in the Munich Digitization Center
  3. ^ Burnett, Charles (2015). "Mantino ben Samuel, Jacob". Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. ISBN 978-3-319-02848-4. Retrieved 2025-08-03.
  4. ^ Steinschneider, Moritz (1852). "5575 JAKOB Mantinus (Mantino)". Catalogus librorum hebraeorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana Jussu curatorum digessit et notis instruxit M. Steinschneider (in Latin). Berolini: Typis Ad. Friedlaender. pp. 1235–1238.
  5. ^ Martin, Craig (2013). "Humanism and the Assessment of Averroes in the Renaissance". Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe. Springer Netherlands. p. 77.
  6. ^ Piaia, Gregorio (2013). "Averroes and Arabic Philosophy in the Modern Historia Philosophica: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries". Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe. Springer Netherlands. p. 248. ISBN 978-94-007-5240-5.
  7. ^ Burnett, Charles (2017). "Aristotle: The Giuntine Edition". Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. ISBN 978-3-319-02848-4. Retrieved 2025-08-03.
  8. ^ Burnett, Charles (2013), "Revisiting the 1552–1550 and 1562 Aristotle-Averroes Edition", in Akasoy, Anna; Giglioni, Guido (eds.), Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 55–64, ISBN 978-94-007-5240-5, retrieved 2025-08-03
  9. ^ Steinschneider, Moritz (1893). Die hebraeischen uebersetzungen des mittelalters und die Juden als dolmetscher: ein beitrag zur literaturgeschichte des mittelalters, meist nach handschriftlichen quellen (in German). Berlin: Kommissionsverlag des Bibliographischen bureaus. pp. 221-222.
  10. ^ Steinschneider, Moritz (1893). Die hebraeischen uebersetzungen des mittelalters und die Juden als dolmetscher: ein beitrag zur literaturgeschichte des mittelalters, meist nach handschriftlichen quellen (in German). Berlin: Kommissionsverlag des Bibliographischen bureaus. pp. 685-686.
  11. ^ Karp, Abraham J.; Library of Congress (1991). From the ends of the earth: Judaic treasures of the Library of Congress: [essays]. Washington: Library of Congress. pp. 63-64. ISBN 978-0-8444-0681-7. p. Quoted in Passion & Compassion - Judaic Treasures, Jewish Virtual Library.: The first edition of the Guide for the Perplexed in Latin printed in bold black type throughout. A historiated initial opens each paragraph in this historically important and typographically distinguished edition. The translation, attributed to Jacob Mantino of Tortosa, was corrected and edited by Augustinus Justinianus.
  12. ^ Fontaine, Resianne (1995). Otot Ha-Shamayim: Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew Version of Aristotle's Meteorology. a Critical Edition, with Introduction, Translation, and Index by Resianne Fontaine (1st ed.). Boston: BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-45202-2.

Further reading

Based on the Jewish Encyclopeda's bibliography:
  • Moritz Steinschneider. The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages and the Jews as Transmitters... [Revised, updated, and translated by Charles H. Manekin, Y. Tzvi Langermann, and Hinrich Biesterfeldt]. Springer Netherlands. 2013–2022. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7314-1. ISBN 978-94-007-7313-4.. Volume 1: pp. 158, 166; Volume 2: pp. 103, 108, 111, 130, 135, 173.
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