The Paduan Rebbi. A Note on Galileo’s Household and Mediterranean Science in the Seventeenth Century

This essay proposes an exercise of 'global mi- crohistory' centered on Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591-1655), an itinerant Jewish alchemist and inventor, born in Candia, who was one of the student-lodgers at Ca- sa Galileo in Padua between 1606 and 1613. Instead of asking primarily if or why this scholar was the first Je- wish Copernican, Delmedigo's experience is framed a- gainst a stable background of trade, antiquarianism, and astronomical interests spanning from Padua to the Eastern Mediterranean. In light of this network of scholarly in- termediation, which is also foreshadowed by the informa- tion system generated by Gianfrancesco Sagredo in his consular years in Syria, the managing of Galileo's expe- rimental household is spatially de-centered; as a main re- sult, the lone theoretician, or homo clausus, gives way to the artisanal epistemology of a homo faber.