In Search of Patronage

This chapter reconstructs the vicissitudes of the Italian Alessandro Amidei, who moved to England in 1656. He apparently taught Hebrew at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and it is certain that he was professor on the same topic in Edinburgh. A singular figure with a shifting and elusive identity, Amidei presented himself as a Catholic ecclesiastic converted to Protestantism on his arrival in England but in following years professed to be a Jew converted to Christianity. In the late 1660s, Amidei made a manuscript copy of an Italian translation of the Book of Common Prayer, posting as its author. Apart from this manuscript, all his other known works for which he claimed his authorship—published and unpublished—were not actually penned by him. So the possibility cannot be excluded that Amidei’s manuscript incorporates elements of someone else’s translation, possibly the one done by Bedell and Sarpi in 1608.