Elia del Medigo

Elia del Medigo, also known as Elijah Delmedigo, who lived from about 1458 to about 1493, was a Jewish philosopher born in Candia on Venetian ruled Crete, to a family that had earlier emigrated from Germany. He spent about ten years in Rome and Padua before returning to Candia at the end of his life, and while some scholars class him as a strong follower of the more radical doctrines of Averroes, including the unity of intellect, the eternity of the world and the autonomy of reason from revealed religion, he himself, according to the scholar Jacob Joshua Ross, saw himself as a follower of Maimonides. He is remembered for translations and commentaries on Averroes, including a 1485 commentary on Averroes's Substantia Orbis, for his influence on Italian Renaissance Platonists, especially Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and for his treatise on Jewish philosophy, Sefer Behinat ha-Dat, or The Examination of Religion, published in 1629, long after his death.