יום ב' ,   2.5.05,   18:00 - 20:00
חדר 496 בנין גילמן

Professor Martin Pine, Queens Collegem CUNY

"The Jews of Renaissance Italy"

From Burckhardt's classic "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" (1860) to the recent synthesis by Lauro Martines, "Power and Imagination: City States in the Italian Renaissance" (1979) Jews are ignored. On the other hand, historians of the Jews in the Italian Renaissance have paid relatively little attention the larger cultural and political devilments of the period except as they directly affected Jewish communities. Renaissance humanism, the anti-Judaism of the elite, the Italian Wars (1494-1559), and the Counter-Reformation have not been sufficiently investigated. This paper will make some tentative suggestions about the effect of the larger cultural and political developments on the Jews as well as the influence of selected Jewish professionals on the wider Christian world. The focus will be on physicians, bankers and traders.

Martin Pine is Professor of History at Queens College. A specialist in Italian Renaissance, he has published Pietro Pomponazzi: Radical Philosopher of the Renaissance as well as many articles on Medieveal and Renaissance intellectual history. His most recent work is the entry "Pietro Pomponazzi" in the new Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998) and "Pietro Pomponazzi's attack on religion and the problem of the De fato"(1999).