Yashar of Candia
1591 CE–1655 CE · Acharonim · Crete (Candia)
R. Joseph Solomon Delmedigo — Yashar of Candia (1591-1655) — was the most polymathic Jewish scientist-philosopher of the early 17th century. Born in Candia (Crete), he studied medicine at Padua (1606-1613) under Galileo — whom he cites approvingly in his cosmological writings — and then served as community physician across Cairo, Constantinople, Vilna (as physician to the magnate Radziwill), Hamburg, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Prague, and finally Prague where he died.
His Sefer Elim (Amsterdam 1629) is a 700-page collection of scientific essays in Hebrew, covering astronomy, mathematics, physics, music theory, and medicine — the first major Hebrew engagement with the new Galilean science. His Matzref la-Chochmah is a sympathetic-critical exposition of Kabbalah.
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Crete (Candia)קריטיAegean island — Venetian then Ottoman
What they did here
Born in Candia (Crete), then under Venetian rule. Grandson of R. Eliyahu Delmedigo. Began early studies on Crete.
About Crete (Candia)
Crete, the largest Greek island, was home to the Bronze Age Minoan civilisation and was conquered by Rome in 69 BCE. Later Byzantine, it was held by an Andalusian Arab emirate from the 820s until its reconquest in 960-961, and was then a Venetian colony from the early thirteenth century until the Ottoman conquest of 1669; under Venice the island was called Candia after its capital, modern Heraklion. The monk Gregory of Sinai learned hesychast prayer on Crete. Its Jewish community, Romaniote in origin, produced the chronicler and chief rabbi Elijah Capsali (c. 1485-after 1550), the philosopher Elia del Medigo (born in Candia c. 1458) and the scholar Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591-1655), who attended Galileo's lectures in Padua.
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