Isaac (Fernando) Cardoso. Philosophia Libera.

(SEPHARDICA).

Bertanorum

Venice

1673

FIRST EDITION . Latin text. Large allegorical engraving on title by A. Bosio after Lafeur. Title printed in red and black. Several ornamental woodcut headpieces and initials. Printed in double columns.

Fürst I, 143

A huge encyclopedic tome ranging from natural philosophy to theology, “the first major work in general philosophy to be written and published by a professing Jew in a secular language, and intended from the outset to reach a wide European audience.” Y.H. Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto (1981), p. 300. The first four books deal extensively with the physical world of cosmology, astronomy, meteorology and metallurgy. The fifth book focuses on zoology and biology, with sections on the four temperaments and the five senses. The sixth book, entitled “De homine,” starts with a eulogy on the dignity of man in the best Renaissance style, followed by a wealth of medical material. The last book discusses theology. Born in 1603 to a New Christian family of crypto-Jews in Trancoso, Portugal, the author, Isaac Cardoso studied in Spain, first at the famed University of Salamanca, and later at the University of Valladolid, where from the precocious age of twenty, he taught philosophy. Later he was appointed physician at the court of Philip IV in Madrid. In 1648, Isaac and his younger brother Abraham suddenly disappeared from Madrid, resurfacing in the Ghetto of Venice as professing Jews. See Y.H. Yerushalmi in: Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana-Treasures of Jewish Booklore (1994) p.48.