A Humanist in the Kloyz: New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars

The article focuses on one entry written in Hebrew in the Album amicorum belonging to the great humanist and diplomat Jacques Bongars. This precious document challenges conventional wisdom about aspects of the life and work of both Bongars and the Maharal of Prague, a central figure in Jewish cultural life in sixteenth-century Central Europe. By setting the album entry in both figures’ historical and cultural worlds, the article reveals how the worlds of these two late great Renaissance figures were intertwined.