Judah Messer Leon

Judah ben Jehiel, (Hebrew: יהודה בן יחיאל‎‎, c. 1420 to 1425 – c. 1498), more usually called Judah Messer Leon (Hebrew: יהודה מסר לאון‎‎), was an Italian rabbi, teacher, physician, and philosopher. Through his works, assimilating and embodying the intellectual approach of the best Italian universities of the time, yet setting it inside the intellectual culture of Jewish tradition, he is seen as a quintessential example of a hakham kolel ("comprehensive scholar"), a scholar who excelled in both secular and rabbinic studies, the Hebrew equivalent of a Renaissance man. This was the ideal he tried to instil in his students.

Judah is thought to have been born in around 1420 at Montecchio Maggiore, now in the Italian province of Vicenza. The son of a doctor, he was ordained as a rabbi and received a diploma in medicine while in his early 20s. According to tradition the honorific title Messer (a title of knighthood) was bestowed on him by the Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, during the emperor's first visit to Italy in 1452, perhaps for work for him as a physician. The name "Leon" is the usual equivalent of "Judah", through the traditional identification of the lion of Judah.

Messer Leon settled as a rabbi at Ancona at about this time, and established a yeshiva, or academy, where he combined the traditional study of the Jewish texts with lectures on the non-Jewish program of the medieval secular curriculum. This academy was to follow him wherever he stayed around Italy over the next four decades. He was also licensed to practice medicine, and his successful activities in this field brought him much acclaim. Between 1456 and 1472 he lived in Padua and Bologna, where he may have studied further at the famous Universities. He is said to have been awarded the title Doctor in Padua in 1469. After a short stay in Venice, where his son David was born, in 1473 he became rabbi in Mantua. There he fell into a conflict with his colleague Joseph Colon Trabotto, in consequence of which both were expelled from the city in 1475.

...
Wikipedia