Il diploma di dottorato in medicina di Avraham ben Me’ir de Balmes (Napoli 1492)

Abstract

The Doctoral Diploma in Medecine of Avraham ben Me’ir de Balmes (Naples 1492)

For the first time, this article publishes and studies at length the original diploma of the doctorate in medicine issued in the Summer of 1492 by the Universityof Naplesto the Jewish physician and philosopher Avraham ben Me’ir de Balmes of Lecce. This unique parchment sheet was seen for the first time in the 19^th century by the scholar Mosè Soave in Venice, among the collections of Michelangelo Guggenheim. Unfortunately Soave, who partially described the document in 1878, didn’t publish the text. Hereafter the document disappeared and it was considered lost. Very recently, the diploma has been put up for sale in 2010 in Como by an antique dealer; subsequently it arrived at Sotheby’s in New York and it is now part of the renowned Braginsky Collection. Thinly illustrated with typical decorations of the late Aragonese period, the diploma is unparalleled and bears an elaborated Latin text, which includes the permission given by Pope Innocent VIII to Avraham de Balmes to obtain the degree of artium et medicinae magister at the Studium of Naples. As the document clearly shows, for some reason in the same session de Balmes received also the title of artium et medicinae doctor, i.e., the doctorate: the highest educational degree, seldom if ever conferred to Jews. After having left the Kingdom of Naples, probably after the general expulsion of 1510, Avraham ben Me’ir worked as a translator, librarian and maybe as a personal physician of the Cardinal Domenico Grimani, living between Venice and Padua. Both died in 1523 at a short distance. The fact that the document was still in Venice in the 19^th century suggest that the diploma remained in the Palazzo Grimani, whose art collections were partially sold by the very Guggenheim, who likely retained the document for himself.