SHABBETAY DONNOLO: A Reappraisal

Authors

Giuseppe M. Cuscito
Università di Roma La Sapienza

Keywords:

Shabbetay Donnolo, medieval Judaism, Jewish astronomy, knowledge transfer

Synopsis

UniorPress2.jpg

Publisher: UniorPress

Series: Archivio di Studi Ebraici

Pages: 150

Language: Italian

NBN: 

Abstract: This book presents a reassessment of the secondary literature written, mostly in Italian, on the life and works of the 10th-century Jewish medic Shabbetay Donnolo. After an introduction on the historical context, the study reconsiders the passages in the Life of Neilos the Younger, a 11th-century hagiography, in which Donnolo is mentioned, and casts doubts on their reliability. Regarding his works, the present study also discusses secondary literature that has attributed three astronomical texts to Donnolo, by showing how these attributions are not always sufficiently grounded and by presenting counter-evidence that seems to point to other, anonymous authors. A hypothesis is advanced regarding the cultural background of his astronomy teacher Bagdat and emphasis is placed on the unique role that Donnolo played in the knowledge transfer, from Asia to Western Europe, by transmitting ideas that ultimately originated in India and were gradually transformed along their path through Persia, Syria and the Arab world.

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Author Biography

Giuseppe M. Cuscito, Università di Roma La Sapienza

Giuseppe M. Cuscito (Ph.D. in History of Religions from “Sapienza” University in Rome) is Honorary Research Fellow at the Sophia Centre at University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, and Academic Collaborator in Jewish History and Civilisation at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. His primary research involves the history of pre-modern “scientific” Jewish thought with a comparative approach and he has translated medieval medical and astronomical texts from Hebrew into Italian. His other line of research involves the study of contemporary pseudohistory and its ties with esotericism and conspiracy theories. Both lines of research investigate the border between the rational and the irrational.

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Published

August 27, 2025

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Details about this monograph

ISBN-13 (15)

978-88-6719-325-7

Publication date (01)

2027-08-27

doi

10.6093/978-88-6719-325-7