Abstract

In 1682 three scholars conducted a coordinated effort to obtain the texts of Hebrew tombstone inscriptions from Jewish cemeteries in northern Italy: Bernardino Ramazzini, a professor of medicine at the University of Padua, Antonio Magliabechi of Florence, librarian to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Johann Christoph Wagenseil, a well-known Christian Hebraist from Altdorf, Germany. This article tells the story of their campaign, based on letters exchanged between the three participants. It fleshes out items mentioned in the correspondence and explores the significance of the affair for the history of European and European-Jewish culture in the early modern era. Among the issues illuminated are messianism, Jewish-Christian relations and Christian Hebraism.

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