David de’ Pomi, a Jewish physician and lexicographer who lived in late sixteenth-century Venice, believed in the medical efficacy of biblical stones. Placing his trust in the powers of tarshish, one of the stones featured in the high priest’s breastplate,¹ he confessed that he “had no greater hope in times of plague” than that stone,

This personal reflection comes from Tsemaḥ David (The sprout of David), de’ Pomi’s lexicographical work published in Venice in 1587 by Zuan di Gara.³ De’ Pomi translates tarshish as diacinto. Diacinto, or hyacinthus in Latin, was known to possess curative properties. But few translators, lexicographers, or biblical commentators paired the scientific reputation of hyacinth with the Bible’s mysterious stone tarshish.⁴ This chapter explores how and why de’ Pomi did this. Since the author of Tsemaḥ David does not reveal his sources for information about tarshish or diacinto, the pages that follow do. My intention is to delineate the options de’ Pomi had, assess which he chose, and reflect on what those choices indicate about his intellectual proclivities and the broader project of probing the Bible’s natural world, which his work represents.⁵ I argue that de’ Pomi translated tarshish as diacinto in order to attach data from Renaissance mineralogy to a biblical term that would underscore tarshish’s medical efficacy. He did so by using empirical evidence of diacinto’s curative powers, as well as oral and written Greek traditions. De’ Pomi’s writings on tarshish underscore the prominence of Greek learning in Italian Jewish intellectual life of the sixteenth century, the persistence of oral traditions in a notoriously bookish age, and the importance of empirical evidence in biblical analysis.

Like many other sixteenth-century lexicographers, collectors, and medical doctors in Europe, David de’ Pomi took an avid interest in the antiquarian and medical aspects of biblical gemstones. His responsibilities as a physician motivated him to seek out effective remedies against all sorts of maladies. As Richard Palmer observed, Italian doctors of the Renaissance were trained to believe that ancient cures were the best ones.⁶ The recurrent plagues that afflicted northern Italy during the course of de’ Pomi’s career created a sharp demand for new, ever more effective prophylactics against the “bad air” of plagues.⁷ Furthermore, his immersion in the cosmopolitan world of sixteenth-century Venice afforded him numerous opportunities to see modern-day derivatives of these stones and speak to the merchants who sold them, the sailors who brought them back, the pharmacists who prescribed them, and the fortunate owners who had the resources and connections to purchase them. For example, he acquired his diacinto stone, and much information about its provenance in the East Indies, from a man he described as a “great Muslim merchant.”⁸ In other writings besides his dictionary de’ Pomi boasted of his prowess in curing people during times of plague. On 1 July 1589, de’ Pomi wrote to Pope Sixtus V to request permission to treat Christian patients. He informed the supreme pontiff that “it will likewise be attested that during the plague which broke out here I performed immense services to the state in visiting and caring for the afflicted without any reward.”⁹ Testimonies to de’ Pomi’s skill came from other pens as well. Earlier in 1589, Archbishop Matteucci, the papal nuncio in Venice, wrote to Sixtus V noting that de’ Pomi “has the reputation of being, although a Jew, a good man” and that he “effected some remarkable cures at the time of the plague.”¹⁰

Late Renaissance natural philosophers wrote at length about precious stones, and David de’ Pomi was no exception. The most prominent group of entries that treat mineralogical topics in Tsemaḥ David includes those defining and describing the stones of the high priest’s breastplate.¹¹ Within that group, de’ Pomi’s entry on tarshish, the tenth stone listed in Exodus 28, is the most fruitful for examination. De’ Pomi flagged the value of this entry, in which he defined tarshish as diacinto, on the title page of his book.¹² Because it is easily the most elaborate of the twelve entries on the breastplate’s stones, and because it departs most radically from the lexicographical tradition de’ Pomi inherited, it tells us much about de’ Pomi’s approach to the natural philosophy of the ancient Jewish world. In order to ascertain why de’ Pomi departed so radically from received lexicography, we must take a wide look at all the sources available to him to comprehend why he chose to identify the stones as he did and expand a single entry into an edifying personal anecdote, a scientific treatise in miniature, and a philological discourse.

David de’ Pomi was born in 1525 at Spoleto, a city that, as he himself put it, had been ravaged by the Italian wars.¹³ He received his early education at home from his father, Rabbi Isaac, and subsequently lived in Todi where he studied “at the feet of the chief of the physicians,” Yehiel Alatino.¹⁴ In 1545 de’ Pomi matriculated at the University of Perugia, where he followed a traditional medical curriculum. Six years later he received his doctorate in medicine and philosophy.¹⁵ He was not the only Jew to earn a medical degree at Perugia during this time; at least two others did as well.¹⁶ After practicing as a physician in a variety of towns in northern Italy, de’ Pomi spent the last twenty-four years of his life, from 1569 to 1593, as a doctor in Venice. In that city he received permission several times to treat Christian patients.¹⁷ In addition to Tsemaḥ David, his best-known work, de’ Pomi published a defense of Jewish physicians, a treatise on the conditions of old age, a translation of Ecclesiastes with an essay on suffering, and a short work on plagues.¹⁸ De’ Pomi also wrote at least two undated and unpublished texts: a historical treatise in Italian on the fall of Cyprus in 1571 to the Turkish Sultan Selim II and a messianic work in Hebrew on exile and redemption.¹⁹

David de’ Pomi wrote in three languages, published several books in his lifetime, and supplied Christian as well as Jewish scholars with information about the Hebrew language and the cultural world of the Bible and postbiblical texts.²⁰ More importantly, because he wrote about medicine, the Bible, and the natural world of scripture, de’ Pomi’s work is an ideal resource for mapping the intersection of biblical studies and natural philosophy in late Renaissance Italy. In spite of the advantages that attend a close study of de’ Pomi, scholarship on the Spoletan doctor has not been extensive. While physicians and philologists have studied de’ Pomi in recent years, few historians have. Unfortunately, studies of de’ Pomi undertaken by medical doctors tend to be fairly impressionistic.²¹ Although modern doctors such as these bring a certain knowledge of medical details to their scrutiny of de’ Pomi, their studies tend to lack awareness of the social and cultural contexts that inform his work. Another approach modern scholars of de’ Pomi have taken is philological.²² As detailed and thorough as studies such as these may be, they tells us little about the themes in de’ Pomi’s work or its significance to early modern or Jewish history.

Historians have not completely neglected de’ Pomi. Cecil Roth, for example, adopts a hagiographic tone when writing about the Spoletan physician and insists that de’ Pomi made certain medical discoveries well in advance of his Christian colleagues: there is an apologetic element to Roth’s writing about de’ Pomi.²³ Roth questions the scientific “accuracy” of de’ Pomi’s discourse on the use of a ram’s horn in medical recipes.²⁴ Remarks such as these indicate that Roth glorified Jewish cultural achievement and minimized what he saw as its superstitious or pseudoscientific qualities. In order to assess the scientific and cultural contributions of de’ Pomi, we must situate his work in the context of his time and refrain from evaluating the “accuracy” of his observations – a modern concern that tells us more about those studying de’ Pomi than de’ Pomi himself.

David de’ Pomi and Greek Education

Of the many tools de’ Pomi used to define and describe classical and postclassical Hebrew words, the Greek language was one of the most important. He knew Greek and frequently mentions Greek words and phrases in his published works. His knowledge of Greek enabled him to seek out alternative editions of the Bible such as the Septuagint. Greek terms proved to be sturdy pegs upon which de’ Pomi could hang scientific and antiquarian knowledge. In turn, that knowledge enriched the religious tradition of which he was enamored. Interest in Greek, attentiveness to material culture, and an emphasis on experimentation are all hallmarks of sixteenth-century medical humanism.²⁵ Educated during medical humanism’s heyday, David de’ Pomi not only absorbed its teachings but, more importantly, applied them to his examination of the Bible.

The Spoletan physician learned Greek while he was a medical student at the University of Perugia. Like all universities on the Italian Peninsula that awarded medical degrees, Perugia placed a heavy emphasis on lettere umane, which were taught every day, once in the morning at hour 17 (eleven o’clock) and again in the afternoon at hour 22 (four o’clock).²⁶ University records from the middle of the sixteenth century cite the importance of Greek in helping to “understand the etymology of words and the structure of Latin sentences.”²⁷ In the late 1540s, when de’ Pomi was a student, Cristoforo Sassi held the chair of lettere umane and was a competent Hellenist. Sassi held that position for more than forty years – evidence of his courses’ popularity with students²⁸ – and was a pupil of the renowned classicists Francesco Maturanzio and Riccardo Bartolini.²⁹ In 1550, the year before de’ Pomi took his degree, the university hired Antonio Galeota da Urbino, a man who favored Greek letters over Latin ones in his teaching and research.³⁰ De’ Pomi learned Greek at a university that valued its instruction.

De’ Pomi’s passion for Greek did not wane after he completed his studies; his mature work, including Tsemaḥ David, amply displays his interest in Greek history and literature. As A. C. Dionisotti pointed out, modern scholars should be cautious about assuming a premodern writer knew Greek just because he quoted a word or two; one could find stray Greek words in a variety of Latin dictionaries in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.³¹ But the frequency of de’ Pomi’s use of Greek obviates this concern. In Tsemaḥ David a number of entries mention Greek. The work’s Latin preface explains that “quite a few external terms,” meaning those that are not Hebrew, “may be found in many commentaries.”³² The most common of these were Persian, Arabic, and Greek. But of those three de’ Pomi lavishes the most attention on Greek. For example, his remarks on gematria, or exegesis based on the numerical value of Hebrew words, distinguish between the rabbinic sense of the term and what ancient Greeks meant by it.³³Tanais, de’ Pomi explains, was the Roman term for a place that Greeks referred to as Thanai.³⁴ The rabbis often used the word listeis, or “assassin,” de’ Pomi informs us, “along with many other Greek terms.”³⁵ Describing the matatron, or angel that ministers to God, de’ Pomi points out that matator is Greek for “guard.”³⁶ According to de’ Pomi, the word siman, or sign, is “more Greek than anything else.”³⁷ This sampling of Greek terms in Tsemaḥ David indicates de’ Pomi’s abiding interest in the language and its traces in rabbinic literature. Later in this chapter we will see how Greek served him in his quest to identify and understand tarshish. But before we are able to examine the important role Greek played in de’ Pomi’s writings, we must explore the acknowledged traditions Tsemaḥ David inherited and responded to: natural philosophy, Hebrew lexicography, and Renaissance mineralogy.

Natural Philosophy in Tsemaḥ David

The stated aim of Tsemaḥ David was to clarify confusing language in scripture. In his Latin preface to the work, de’ Pomi noted that Hebrew terms possess various meanings and that “ambiguous words may be regularly found among Hebrew [writers].”³⁸ One who studies de’ Pomi’s dictionary, as a Hebrew passage on the title page advertised, “will scarcely need any other commentary to understand and discern the interpretation of literary matters and [their] plain sense.”³⁹ Similarly, the Latin section of Tsemaḥ David’s title page emphasized that diligent readers could use the dictionary to interpret the Holy Scriptures “with ease.”⁴⁰ But de’ Pomi’s work had broader applications apart from elucidating the true meaning of scripture. It also introduced readers to postclassical Hebrew writings. And the sorts of writings de’ Pomi had in mind were not only “declarations and discourses on the divine and Mosaic law” but also those “about many of the liberal arts.”⁴¹ His dictionary helped readers “clearly understand the force of the meaning of every term written by diverse Hebrew authors about various fields of learning.”⁴² Words like tarshish had substantial afterlives in late antique and medieval Hebrew writings. De’ Pomi’s tendency to apply scientific learning to the Bible and biblical learning to modern science is a particular feature of Tsemaḥ David.

As did many physicians of the late Renaissance, David de’ Pomi infused his work with colorful digressions on a variety of natural philosophic topics. Essays such as the one on the ram’s horn that Roth mocked were not exceptions to de’ Pomi’s scientific acumen. Though they may have clashed with Roth’s modern sensibilities, they are nonetheless representative of de’ Pomi’s overall approach to natural philosophy. De’ Pomi’s specific interest in natural philosophy is manifest in both the Hebrew and Latin sections of Tsemaḥ David’s title page. The Hebrew portion of the title page claims that the dictionary reveals “secrets and mysteries of nature, particularly in discussing precious stones and pearls.”⁴³ Furthermore, the Hebrew text broadcasts that the dictionary conveys the “true capacity and wondrous power that the diacinto possesses against the plague as well as other matters that are hidden from the masses.”⁴⁴ The Hebrew front matter not only calls attention to the conspicuous role of natural philosophy in the work but also spotlights the efficacy of the very stone this chapter examines.

The Latin section of the title page is even more explicit about Tsemaḥ David’s originality and its scientific bent. De’ Pomi claims that his lexicon is “exceedingly detailed, such as has never existed before,” and boasts that the work deals with “pearls, unicorns, amber, hyacinth, and other new precious stones, somewhat removed from general knowledge, which will be deemed mysterious to most people.” Like the Hebrew portion of the title page, the Latin section highlights the central scientific preoccupation of Tsemaḥ David. It does so, however, with greater specificity.⁴⁵

De’ Pomi’s focus on stones, gems, and other marvels of biblical natural science was not unique in late sixteenth-century Italy. Other scholars, including at least one lexicographer, took a similar interest in the scientific realia of the biblical world. For example, David de’ Pomi acknowledged Marco Marini in the Latin preface to Tsemaḥ David, writing that “one can easily supplement anything lacking” in his dictionary with the work of the “distinguished Reverend and Abbot, the most learned master Marcus Marini, who, having no equal among Latin scholars, illuminated the Hebrew language.”⁴⁶ Marini’s Arca Noë, completed in April 1581 but not published until 1593, advertises its concern with scientific terminology in Hebrew. In his preface “to the reader who loves Hebrew” (ad φιλεβράιον lectorem), Marini insists that the language is rich in scientific value. He writes, “If we desire learning, we shall find no other language richer in learning, for I marvel that, in a way, it embraces all scientific, divine, and human learning.”⁴⁷ Marini’s readers evidently agreed and flagged Arca Noë’s scientific value. In a laudatory epistle written in Hebrew by Israel Zifroni of Guastalla⁴⁸ and included in the front matter of Marini’s dictionary, the Jewish printer and savant points out how valuable the dictionary is, especially since it contains information about the “shoham stones, avnei miluim” and also the “urim ve tumim,” the prophetic stones used by the high priest to predict the future.⁴⁹ Zifroni also insists that “everything that the author truly vocalized with his hand is correct for the discerning one and accurate for those who find understanding; your eyes will see and you will rejoice.”⁵⁰ In directing his readers to Marini’s work, de’ Pomi identified an intellectual comrade in late sixteenth-century Italy, one whose authority other Jews such as Zifroni would endorse several years later. De’ Pomi’s work, though unique, was not conceived or carried out in intellectual isolation.

David de’ Pomi and Renaissance Lexicography

De’ Pomi’s fellow naturalists were not his only intellectual peers. A broader class of learned men entreated him to polish and publish his scattered notes. Just as Aldrovandi was impelled to investigate the Bible’s natural world by Gabriele Paleotti, de’ Pomi was persuaded to do the same by certain Venetian nobles. In an Italian preface to his work, de’ Pomi explains its genesis, recounting that he had “compiled in my infancy, and in my youth a dictionary in Hebrew, Latin, and Italian for my own use.” Some friends had seen it and urged him to publish it, since

De’ Pomi tells his readers that his nameless admirers “added that my labor was greater by a significant measure than those written by others.”⁵² De’ Pomi does mention Lorenzo Massa, secretary of the Venetian senate and, in de’ Pomi’s view, a man “not unlearned in Hebrew.”⁵³ Not coincidentally, Massa had helped de’ Pomi publish some of his Latin writings. Just as natural philosophy was a social enterprise strengthened by the bonds of friendship, so was lexicography.

Dictionaries were a major preoccupation of Renaissance intellectual life.⁵⁴ By the sixteenth century, Hebrew lexicography had a storied past. In Jewish culture, systematically defining biblical words was a project that had begun in the Gaonic period (seventh to eleventh centuries). Gerrit Bos has shown how Jews in medieval Western Europe translated some of the Bible’s natural terminology into Latin and Romance vernaculars as well.⁵⁵ And Israel Ta Shema has written about medieval lexicographers, such as Nathan ben Yeḥiel of Rome, the eleventh-century polymath who wrote the Middle Ages’ most comprehensive Hebrew dictionary.⁵⁶ The presence of Greek words in Ben Yeḥiel’s dictionary may have made it even more appealing to de’ Pomi.⁵⁷ Other philologists such as David Kimḥi and Abraham Ibn Ezra flourished several centuries before de’ Pomi.⁵⁸

In Latinate culture, by contrast, the sixteenth century was a transformative period. Perhaps the most important Renaissance dictionary was Ambrogio Calepino’s appropriately named Cornucopiae, published in 1502 in Reggio. As a student of early modern dictionaries observed, “during the whole period of the Renaissance scarcely an important dictionary was published which did not reflect directly or indirectly the influence of the Calepine.”⁵⁹ This work, written in Latin, incorporated seven languages into its entries. In the years after Calepino’s death, the dictionary was enlarged considerably, and by 1590 four new languages were added, including Polish and Hungarian.⁶⁰ Yet Calepino’s dictionary was more than a simple mechanism for defining words. One unique feature is its polyglot nature; another is its tendency to move beyond simple definitions and treat the many associations of each word. In fact, DeWitt Starnes pointed out that Calepino’s work functions as much as an encyclopedia as a dictionary; the same could be said for de’ Pomi’s.⁶¹ A major source of this tendency for Calepino, and for lexicographers who followed in his train, was Franciscus Grapaldus’s Lexicon de partibus aedium. In that work, Grapaldus’s discussion of the term apotheca, for example, moves from a discussion of wine shops to wine cellars to different types of wines and ultimately to the vessels that contain them.⁶² Abraham Portaleone was similarly interested in the vessels and storage facilities that were a key part of pharmacological culture in late Renaissance Mantua.⁶³ De’ Pomi shares the same digressive and associative style that characterizes other Renaissance dictionaries and encyclopedias, in which their authors could display their broad learning.

John Considine has identified another cluster of sixteenth-century dictionaries that explicitly served cultural historians and antiquarian scholars. Three of the French Hellenist Guillaume Budé’s early works display this approach to classical antiquity. His Annotationes (1508) on the first twenty-four books of the Pandectae, an early text of Roman law, applied his knowledge of everyday life in the ancient world to a study of its laws. De asse et partibus eius libri quinque (1514) examined ancient numismatics and glossed many ancient texts that mentioned money. He poured his considerable knowledge of ancient legal practices into another work, his Commentarii linguae graecae of 1529.⁶⁴ In an analogous way de’ Pomi infused his lexicographical work with his deep knowledge of natural philosophy. In the late Renaissance, dictionaries served many purposes besides providing definitions of words. They frequently functioned as outlets for authors to display their erudition.

The study of Hebrew underwent a renaissance in the sixteenth century, just as Latin and Greek did, and engaged Jews and Christians alike. Well-known Christian Hebraists like Sebastian Münster and Johannes Buxtorf compiled Hebrew dictionaries. Elia Levita composed a Hebrew dictionary in which he discussed Aramaic forms of Hebrew words.⁶⁵ Sante Pagnini wrote a Hebrew dictionary as well.⁶⁶Tsemaḥ David belongs to this renascent genre of sixteenth-century dictionaries as well as to the established tradition of Hebrew lexicography from the Middle Ages. Like Calepino and other Renaissance lexicographers, de’ Pomi conceived of his work as an amplification of other texts. The Hebrew portion of Tsemaḥ David’s title page announces that the text expatiates upon every word in Nathan ben Yeḥiel’s Arukh, the Meturgeman and Tishbi of Elia Levita,⁶⁷ and many “other words besides those, exceedingly numerous.”⁶⁸ Rather than expand on those works, de’ Pomi’s dictionary supersedes them. Nathan ben Yeḥiel, David Kimḥi, and Elia Levita rarely expatiate upon topics in their definitions; de’ Pomi frequently does. His entry on qorban (sacrificial offering), for example, runs to two printed columns in Hebrew, five in Latin, and two in Italian.⁶⁹ The breadth and detail of the Latin entry for qorban reveals that de’ Pomi wished his Christian readers to know much more about sacrificial offerings than they could by merely reading the Bible. This antiquarian essay on animal sacrifices condenses Mishnaic and Talmudic scholarship on this topic and presents it, complete with the original terminology, for his readers’ instruction.

Hyacinth and Tsemaḥ David

Many entries in Tsemaḥ David are expansive and anecdotal. De’ Pomi’s definitions of precious stones are no exception. And it is no accident that de’ Pomi reserves the longest and most fulsome treatment of any biblical stone for tarshish, which he equated with hyacinth. In the sixteenth century hyacinth was commonly used as a prophylactic against the plague. But precisely how de’ Pomi equated these two terms and the products they represented is a more complicated matter. De’ Pomi’s Latin entry for tarshish, like his Hebrew one, provides a skeletal outline of the issue. Indeed, Latin and Hebrew entries are often nearly identical in Tsemaḥ David, perhaps because its author wished Jews to improve their Latin by reading the language alongside a Hebrew translation; conversely, Christian scholars well versed in Latin could deepen their knowledge of Hebrew by comparing it to the Latin that followed. In contrast, the Italian portion of de’ Pomi’s entry is where he expands on themes introduced in the Hebrew and Latin, and where he presents the appropriate medical data. Indeed, de’ Pomi almost always reserves his most extensive remarks for the vernacular portions of his entries. By using the vernacular rather than Latin to fully develop his ideas, de’ Pomi followed in the footsteps of several sixteenth-century writers.⁷⁰

To get a sense of how de’ Pomi frames the discussion of tarshish, it is worth quoting the Latin entry in full:

While de’ Pomi claims that the tarshish stone comes from an eponymous island in Africa and is a type of pearl that emerges from crustaceans only after periods of prolonged rain, the Latin tells us nothing of the value of the stone or of its medical properties; de’ Pomi’s Italian entry develops these themes.

After stating that tarshish may be understood as iacinto, the Italian word for hyacinth, de’ Pomi gives oral testimony regarding the provenance of the stone. The Spoletan physician cites one of his rabbinic colleagues and an anonymous Turkish merchant,⁷² who testifies to the truth of what de’ Pomi conveyed in the Latin and Hebrew portions of the entry. He recounts that

De’ Pomi interrupts the Turkish merchant’s account to summarize the relevance of the episode; then he proceeds to discuss the medical properties of the stone. “It is not surprising, therefore, that many of these stones possess great virtue against the plague, especially the diacinto, which I have experimented with in times of infestation in this great city. Because of a heavenly influx in certain constellations, plague arises, since God wills it to be so.”⁷⁴ De’ Pomi’s entry ends by directing the reader to an excursus about hyacinth in the Aramaic section of Tsemaḥ David.⁷⁵ The lengthy Italian entry in this section simply serves to describe how pearls emerge from crustaceans on a certain Indian island owing to the influence of seasonal rains. Before de’ Pomi could accurately expand upon the medical properties of the tarshish stone, he first had to equate it to hyacinth and give a full account of its origin. Having done so, the stage was set for a medical explanation of the benefits of the hyacinth stone. These preliminary remarks also signal the conspicuous interest in precious stones both within the Jewish community and outside of it.

De’ Pomi’s Hebrew entry states that the “true” hyacinth stone is exceedingly rare and found only in small numbers; it is “extremely dear to one who knows its power and ability, which is great.”⁷⁶ In the Hebrew entry, but not in the Italian or Latin, de’ Pomi dismisses quacks and unlettered merchants. As David Gentilcore has shown, many university-trained physicians calumniated against such medical practitioners.⁷⁷ De’ Pomi cautions his readers that “the unlearned, artisans, and stone merchants call the diacinto a stone of golden color, but it is not like that at all.”⁷⁸ The real color of the diacinto, de’ Pomi maintains, is red. After remarking that the “true” stone comes only from Ethiopia and India, de’ Pomi addresses the medical relevance of the gem. The Hebrew entry points out that the ancient rabbis knew that the stone could help prevent the spread of the plague; the Italian entry says nothing about rabbis, but does remark that the “ancient and learned authors” praised its value against the plague.⁷⁹ Clearly, de’ Pomi’s praise for and belief in the medical efficacy of tarshish far exceeds his faith in any of the other stones of the breastplate. His claims about its immediate, even magical effect against contagious disease testify to the value of the stone in his eyes. The rest of the entry explains how to go about examining these stones to distinguish true from false – a theme that twenty years later Abraham Portaleone would develop with even greater energy.⁸⁰ Finally, de’ Pomi excuses himself for the lengthy digression, stating that, “even though with this narrative I may have departed from the order of the dictionary, I hope that readers will not deem me worthy of censure, considering that it was for their benefit, and not mine, that I wrote these things.”⁸¹

The first acknowledged source for David de’ Pomi’s comments on precious stones is medieval Jewish lexicography. As he himself noted on the title page of Tsemaḥ David, the work was designed as an amplification of three major works: the Arukh, by the eleventh-century Roman lexicographer Nathan ben Yeḥiel; and the Meturgeman and Tishbi of Elia Levita, the fifteenth-century Jewish grammarian and lexicographer who tutored Sebastian Münster in Hebrew.⁸² Given that all three of these works are explicitly dedicated to explaining postclassical Hebrew, none of them would have been of much help to de’ Pomi in his effort to define the scientific language of scripture.

The one medieval Jewish lexicographer from whom de’ Pomi drew considerably is David Kimḥi, the late twelfth-century exegete and grammarian. Although de’ Pomi does not mention Kimḥi on the title page of his work, the front matter of Tsemaḥ David signals Kimḥi’s importance to de’ Pomi’s work three times. Tsemaḥ David’s Latin preface states that the twenty-four books of the Bible contain the “pura hebraica lingua.” On these rich linguistic depositories, Kimḥi, “that illustrious man” (insignis ille vir), based his grammar. Furthermore, Kimḥi was the first, according to de’ Pomi, to divide his dictionary into biblical words and nonbiblical words: a taxonomic principle that guides Tsemaḥ David.⁸³ In the Hebrew preface to his work, de’ Pomi mentions Kimḥi again, suggesting that Kimḥi was de’ Pomi’s first point of reference for the meaning of words after Nathan ben Yeḥiel’s Arukh. Only after exhausting the Arukh and Kimḥi’s works did de’ Pomi turn to Levita’s linguistic compositions. “I compiled this composition from all of these [sources],” de’ Pomi writes.⁸⁴

Kimḥi’s work was extremely important for de’ Pomi as he struggled to define the precious stones of the high priest’s breastplate. Of the three stones that de’ Pomi discourses upon most prolifically, he takes his definitions of two of them directly from Kimḥi, most likely via the edition with Levita’s Latin glosses. Indeed, if we systematically compare the identifications of the twelve stones carried out by Kimḥi and de’ Pomi, we see that half the definitions are exactly the same.⁸⁵ In short, de’ Pomi was seriously indebted to Kimḥi and Levita for the Latinate scientific vocabulary that corresponded to the precious stones. Yet de’ Pomi found little of intrinsic interest when it came to the scientific content of Kimḥi’s definitions. De’ Pomi, a medical doctor, craved more substantial material on the medical properties of the stones. Identifications, in the form of names, may have come directly from Levita’s edition of Kimḥi. Descriptions, however, and medical excurses, came from other, less predictable, sources.

Examining Kimḥi’s comments on three stones in particular underscores de’ Pomi’s originality. For pitdah, Kimḥi notes that it is “a stone from among the precious stones. They say that it is green, and Rabbi Yona writes that it is called in Arabic.”⁸⁶ In the margin next to this gloss, we find the words “Lapis praeciosus, smaragdus.”⁸⁷ Kimḥi’s remarks on yahalom, the next stone that de’ Pomi discourses upon at length, are scarcely more developed. Kimḥi quotes Abraham Ibn Ezra, who maintains that a Spanish sage noted that it is called in Arabic. On the chemical composition of the stone, Kiṃhi writes, “it breaks all stones and bores holes through them.” In the margin next to these remarks we read “Iaspis.”⁸⁸ For tarshish, Kimḥi offers even less specificity. He writes, “a precious stone that looks like . We have already discussed it in the entry for .” In the margin next to this entry, Kimḥi writes “Chrysolithus.”⁸⁹ Such is the level of depth and content in Kimḥi’s glosses.

Yet there was more to the world of medieval Hebrew writings on precious stones than just lexicographical works. Though he never acknowledges them, David de’ Pomi may have drawn from a significant and growing body of lapidaries that circulated in manuscript throughout the later Middle Ages and early modern period. By de’ Pomi’s time there were several Hebrew manuscripts concerning precious stones.⁹⁰ Some of these lapidaries were arranged according to the alphabetical order of non-Hebrew mineralogical terms, others according to the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and still others according to the Hebrew terms for the stones mentioned in the book of Exodus. The affinities between some of these works and de’ Pomi’s entry on tarshish are strong. One text extols the placement of precious stones in rings as a way of keeping a curative nearby. Others identify tarshish as iacinto but say nothing about the salubrious properties of the stone. Still others assess precious stones besides tarshish in nearly identical ways to how de’ Pomi describes iacinto’s medicinal value. But in the many medieval and Renaissance lapidaries that were distributed under various authors’ names, only a few addressed the medicinal properties of either tarshish or iacinto in a way that corresponds to de’ Pomi’s entry, and these were written, without exception, by Italian or Greek physicians in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. Renaissance Jewish physicians in Greek-speaking areas turned to Greek renderings of the Bible. Italian Jewish physicians did so, too.

Rings are frequently mentioned in medieval Hebrew lapidaries, as are observations about the efficacy of stones against the plague. A discussion of the bezoar stone in a Hebrew lapidary attributed to Aristotle and copied in 1382 in an Italian script describes the secrets of that stone in a manner reminiscent of de’ Pomi’s discussion of iacinto.⁹¹ The text makes two points that connect to de’ Pomi’s work: “its characteristic is that it is effective against all plant and animal poisons, and from the bite of rodents and their stings”;⁹² and it explicitly mentions that this stone may be worn as a ring: “Whoever places a ring [made] of it on his finger will be respected by all who look upon him.”⁹³

An anonymous late medieval text from the end of the fourteenth century goes so far as to identify tarshish with iacinto. Apart from some reflections on the stone’s color and its homiletic significance for being paired with the tribe of Asher, the most significant part of this entry is the simple statement: “Tarshish is iacint[o].”⁹⁴ This text may have helped de’ Pomi equate tarshish and hyacinth, but it did not offer any explanation for why the biblical stone should be understood as iacinto.

A third text provides even more clues. In the early years of the sixteenth century, a Cretan Jewish doctor named Moses ben Eliahu Galina, who was also known as “the master of the secret,” wrote a work called Divrei Ḥakhamim.⁹⁵ It was not published until 1730 but circulated in manuscript form in the sixteenth century. Galina did see the publication of another of his works during his lifetime, a treatise on chiromancy and phrenology entitled Toldot Adam, published in Venice in 1517. Galina’s entry on iacinto is similar to de’ Pomi’s definition in emphasizing iacinto’s curative properties. Galina does not identify the biblical stone tarshish with iacinto, but his treatment of iacinto strongly resembles that of de’ Pomi. Galina defines three types of iacinto stone (as does de’ Pomi) and observes that “the third type of this stone protects man so that he is not struck by the arrows of lightning that descend upon him in fury from the heavens. Additionally, he who wears it will not die from the plague because the ring purifies the air around him. And it removes from him the poison that is collected within it [the air].”⁹⁶ Galina and de’ Pomi shared two important things in common: they were both physicians, and they both relied upon Greek traditions in their explication of the Bible. The fact that Galina, a Jewish physician from a Greek-speaking milieu, described the hyacinth stone in terms redolent of those de’ Pomi used indicates the role that Greek learning may have played in identifying tarshish with iacinto.⁹⁷

Another even more probable source for de’ Pomi’s equation of tarshish with hyakinthos was oral tradition. It is not surprising that northern Italian Jews would have absorbed Greek teachings concerning the precious stones of the Bible. As many as fourteen thousand Greeks lived in Italy between 1566 and 1596.⁹⁸ Greek Jews were prominent in Venice and throughout the Veneto.⁹⁹ Significantly, many Italian doctors served as Venetian envoys and resident physicians in places with Greek-speaking Jewish communities, such as Constantinople and Crete.¹⁰⁰ And unattributed Greek etymologies in Tsemaḥ David suggest that de’ Pomi may have heard oral communications from Greek speakers regarding the role of Greek in Hebrew literature. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the romance philologist David Blondheim showed how persistent oral traditions of the names of biblical stones were in the Jewish communities of medieval Europe; those oral transmissions gave rise to disparate renderings of these terms.¹⁰¹ Long ago Joseph Perles proved that vernacular translations of the names of the stones were regularly taught to Jews in school.¹⁰² Blondheim published manuscript fragments in Romance languages, written in Hebrew characters, that gave vernacular equivalents for the stones’ names. Many of those translations show the influence of Greek. Indeed, a late fourteenth-century Greek translation of the Bible known as the Graecus Venetus, undertaken by a Jew who converted to Christianity, equates tarshish with hyakinthos.¹⁰³

Closer to de’ Pomi’s own time, his colleague and coreligionist Abraham Portaleone not only gave his own rendition of the twelve stones in Italian but supplied that of his teacher, Moses Provenzali. Provenzali never published his translation, and Portaleone remarks that he “received the solution to the identity of the precious stones from the academy of the great, exalted master, the awe-inspiring man of God, our honorable teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Moses Provenzali of blessed memory.”¹⁰⁴ While Portaleone ultimately did not agree with Provenzali, Provenzali’s tradition regarding tarshish was to equate it with iacinto. David de’ Pomi did not study with Provenzali, nor did he have the chance to read Portaleone’s encyclopedia; it was not published until several years after his death. But Provenzali’s translation, identical to de’ Pomi’s, demonstrates Italian Jews’ tendency to use Hellenic traditions to elucidate the Bible’s natural science.¹⁰⁵

As significant as the Hebrew lapidaries and oral traditions were, the most important sources for scientific information on the precious stones for a sixteenth-century Italian physician like de’ Pomi did not come from Jewish texts written in Hebrew but from Christian ones written in Latin. While Hebrew lapidaries and oral teachings may have helped him translate tarshish as hyacinth, they could not provide much information about the properties of that stone. By the High Middle Ages, Western European scholars could draw from a rich well of materials on the supposedly natural properties of precious stones.¹⁰⁶ One of the most prolific writers on this topic was Albertus Magnus (d. 1280). Renaissance figures, including de’ Pomi, quote his work, and still more allude to or borrow from his writings.¹⁰⁷

Albertus Magnus’s De mineralibus was an important though unacknowledged source for de’ Pomi. Indeed, de’ Pomi’s use of the Tarshish stone closely follows Albertus Magnus’s own description of the physical uses particular to hyacinth. Describing hyacinthus, Albertus Magnus writes that, “physically, its use is that when suspended from the neck or worn on the finger it keeps a traveler safe and makes him welcome to those who entertain him. It also protects him in regions infected with the plague.”¹⁰⁸ As we have seen, de’ Pomi champions an identical use for this stone, in terms of both the manner in which it ought to be worn and the tutelary uses to which it may be put. Even though de’ Pomi does not mention Albertus Magnus as a direct source for this practice, the close resemblance between the two texts is striking and provides evidence that de’ Pomi was reading, or at the very least knew about, Albertus Magnus’s work.

Another unacknowledged medieval source de’ Pomi drew from is Serapion, a Christian physician.¹⁰⁹ David de’ Pomi’s contemporary and colleague Abraham Portaleone refers to Serapion’s work numerous times, and though de’ Pomi does not, we may assume he knew about Serapion, given how fundamental his works were to sixteenth-century medical culture. De’ Pomi learned much about hyacinth from Serapion’s work: the color and appearance of the best sort of tarshish gem, and several of its salutary properties. In particular, Serapion maintains that there are three kinds of hyacinth stone but that “the red variety is better than the others. When a fire is lit near it, it glows increasingly red.”¹¹⁰ Beyond this simple description of its physical appearance, de’ Pomi also may have taken some medical details from Serapion. The medieval Arab physician asserted that “the power of Hyacinth is such that whoever carried it with himself, as either a little figurine or some other type thereof, and enters into a place or a province in which many people have fallen, or into a plague-stricken region, no harm will befall him and he will remain safe from danger; no lightning will ever strike him. This property of hyacinth is well known and much praised among men.”¹¹¹ De’ Pomi seems to have taken as much from Serapion as from Albertus Magnus, and each scholar provided valuable information on the medical value of the hyacinth stone.

The most likely way de’ Pomi learned about these medieval figures was by reading Renaissance medical writers. Perhaps the first text David de’ Pomi would have turned to for information about the medical properties of stones was Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres. In fact, this book was one of the most popular medical works of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.¹¹² Virtually any university-educated physician would have been familiar with its contents. At various points in his work, Ficino discusses the magical and medical properties of precious stones, explaining that these properties are inherently magical and quasi divine: “Since properties of this kind and their effects could not come into being by elemental power, it follows that they proceed from the life and spirit of the cosmos, particularly through those very rays of the stars; and that therefore through them the spirit is affected as much and as soon as possible and exposed very much to celestial influences.”¹¹³ Ficino believed that the cosmos was animate and that divinely infused spiritus from the heavens affected things on earth. To Ficino, precious stones were repositories for spiritus – an idea that would have been appealing to de’ Pomi. Moving on to discuss some particular stones, Ficino observes that “it is for just this reason that emerald, jacinth, sapphire, topaz, ruby, unicorn’s horn, but especially the stone which the Arabs call bezoar, are endowed with occult properties of the Graces.”¹¹⁴ Because of their divine nature, supernatural origin, and medical efficacy, many of these objects, or their Hebrew equivalents, receive lengthy and detailed entries in de’ Pomi’s dictionary. In yet another parallel to de’ Pomi’s prophylactic use of hyacinth, Ficino remarks about these gems that “not only if they are taken internally, but even if they touch the flesh, and, warmed thereby, put forth their power, they introduce celestial force into the spirits by which the spirits preserve themselves from plague and poison.”¹¹⁵ This observation legitimizes the practice of wearing a gem, as it substantiates the salutary power of gems that merely come into contact with the skin and need not assimilate directly into the body. Ficino acknowledges Serapion as his major source for this information. He notes that “Serapion writes that he who wears a jacinth, or a signet made from one, is safe from lightning; and that this power of it is very widely known.”¹¹⁶ In terms of both its particular emphasis on the properties of the hyacinth stone and its general ascription of divinity to the healing powers of stones, Ficino’s De vita libri tres was a likely source for de’ Pomi.

Closer to his own time, de’ Pomi might well have drawn from the work of Girolamo Cardano, who wrote extensively about precious stones in the seventh book of his encyclopedia of natural history, De subtilitate libri XXI.¹¹⁷ It is especially noteworthy that so many of the stones Cardano studied were understood by contemporary Europeans as being the modern-day equivalents of biblical gems. Near the beginning of his extended essay on precious stones, Cardano writes that “most excellent among gems are green smaragdus, red carbunculus, sparkling adamas, milky pearl, dark-blue sapphire, golen chrysolithus, and various types of opal ... hyacinth may be added to these.”¹¹⁸ Nearly all of these stones were taken by biblical commentators, lexicographers, and natural scientists to represent either the stones in the high priest’s breastplate or those in Revelation. Cardano upholds the medical efficacy of stones, stating that “not only are they alive, but they also alleviate sicknesses, old age, even death.”¹¹⁹ Moving from general observations about gems to specific remarks on their individual properties, Cardano discusses hyacinth at length and calls upon the testimony of familiar medieval authorities. He writes that “men of worthy authority attribute to Hyacinth much praise. Among them is Serapio, whom in [my] commentary on Ars medica I taught was [the same person as] John of Damascus, and who argues that [hyacinth] will render safe from lightning those who wear it – it will indeed protect them.¹²⁰ And just as a wax seal whose engravings are imprinted upon it, so will [hyacinth] make its mark on those who wear it.”¹²¹ Following these remarks, Cardano repeats the familiar wisdom that hyacinth keeps its wearers safe from lightning and the plague. Even though Cardano is more concerned with how the stone protects people from lightning and thunder, devoting several pages to an examination of precisely how the stone does this, he also states that the stone is capable of affording protection from pestilence. Finally, as marker of the two men’s similar inclinations, Cardano himself wore a hyacinth stone on a ring, just as de’ Pomi did. Cardano admitted that “I am accustomed to wearing quite a large stone, and it seems not to act as a soporific. My own stone is not crimson, which is the best sort, but golden, and far from the best. The crimson [stone] is the best.”¹²² The similarities between Cardano’s work on hyacinth and de’ Pomi’s definition of tarshish are evident, and they indicate that de’ Pomi may have borrowed much from him.

Another contemporary scientific source de’ Pomi drew on for information about the biblical stone tarshish may have been François de la Rue’s De gemmis ... explicatio. De la Rue, or Rueus as he was known throughout the Latin world, originally published his work in Paris in 1547. De gemmis is organized not around the account of the high priest’s breastplate in Exodus 28, but around John the Apostle’s vision of the thirteen stones descending from the Jerusalem sky in the penultimate chapter of Revelation.¹²³ Clearly, de la Rue’s scholarly point of departure, as well as his main area of interest, is the mineralogy of the New Testament rather than that of the Old Testament. Even so, many of the stones mentioned in Revelation are identical to those in Exodus or, more importantly, were conflated by Renaissance readers. Not surprisingly, de la Rue’s entry on hyacinth bears some vivid similarities to de’ Pomi’s. After describing the appearance of the stone at some length, de la Rue suggests that, “moreover, when one looks at its features, it thickens and restores stubborn coldness from bodies, brings on sleep, guards powers (of the heart especially), and it is believed to keep away the plague from those who wear it, bringing its hidden properties to light.”¹²⁴ As we have seen, de’ Pomi also believed in hyacinth’s ability to ward off the plague. Beyond this, de la Rue mentions other medical attributes of hyacinth, including its promotion of mental alacrity and its defense against the evil portents of thunder.¹²⁵ Lastly, de la Rue states that hyacinth is most effective as a medicament when it is “hung around the neck as an amulet close to the heart, so that it touches the skin.”¹²⁶ In spite of the key similarities in de’ Pomi’s and de la Rue’s treatment of the hyacinth stone, one must bear in mind that de la Rue’s discussion of hyacinth was grounded in a study of New Testament, as opposed to Old Testament, stones. Nevertheless, de la Rue may have been a source for de’ Pomi. Renaissance physicians believed deeply in the power of the hyacinth stone. Medical men as different as François de la Rue, Girolamo Cardano, and David de’ Pomi all wore it in nearly identical fashion.¹²⁷

Some of de’ Pomi’s Christian contemporaries had a distinct approach to the stones of the Bible, one that emphasized their theological significance more than their medical properties. Andrea Bacci’s work on this subject, published at Rome in the same year as de’ Pomi’s dictionary, exemplifies this trend and provides a helpful point of comparison and contrast.¹²⁸ Even though Bacci emphasized doctrinal issues at the expense of scientific ones, his main interest, even in a book on an ostensibly theological subject, was natural philosophy. Near the beginning of Le XII Pietre Pretiose, Bacci noted that “it has always been the opinion of the great [natural] philosophers, and has been confirmed by the holy doctors of the church, that in all of nature works of greater wonder than gems and precious stones are not to be seen.” For Bacci the church fathers merely confirmed what science had already taught him. But his book enriched patristic teachings with medieval and modern science. Tsemaḥ David displays the same complementary relationship between religious and scientific authority. Given the similarities between Bacci’s and de’ Pomi’s work, and also the simultaneous publication of their books, a closer look at Bacci’s Le XII Pietre Pretiose helps clarify the dynamic between science and faith in Tsemaḥ David.

Andrea Bacci was an exact contemporary of de’ Pomi, and their research interests were similar. Born in 1524 in Sant’Elipidio a Mare, in Piceno, Bacci never earned a medical degree but, owing to papal intervention, was granted a chair in 1567 in botany at the University of Rome (La Sapienza). He remained in this position all his life and in 1587 was named chief physician to Pope Sixtus V.¹²⁹ That same year, Bacci wrote his short work on the precious stones of the Bible, dedicated to Alessandro Peretti, the cardinal of Montalto. It is striking that Bacci’s piece and de’ Pomi’s dictionary were published the same year and noteworthy that Bacci’s and de’ Pomi’s title pages emphasize a focus on precious stones and their occult secrets – even the very same stones.¹³⁰ Bacci was widely recognized for his mineralogical work. In a dedicatory poem to one of Bacci’s later books, a natural history of wine in the ancient world, the Neapolitan theologian Giovanni Francisco Lombardo recalled Bacci’s celebration of stones in Exodus and praised him for “adorning nature with his learned talents.”¹³¹

Bacci’s work on precious stones is in many ways similar to de’ Pomi’s. The Roman botanist confirms de’ Pomi’s belief that merely looking at precious stones gives strength to the observer. Bacci cites a passage from book 3 of Josephus’s Antiquities explaining that, in biblical times, Jews would bring these stones with them into battle. According to Josephus, the glow of the stones would strengthen the Israelites’ resolve and weaken that of their enemies.¹³² Bacci also proposes that those who wear stones as ornaments or as fixtures in rings have wonderful access to occult powers.¹³³ These brief passages from Bacci’s preface correspond to de’ Pomi’s similar claims and testify to the wide diffusion of these ideas. They suggest that de’ Pomi was not alone among sixteenth-century Italian physicians in believing that the precious stones of the Bible had miraculous and medically benevolent powers.

But Bacci’s work departs from de’ Pomi’s in two important ways: both his translation of names for biblical stones and his analysis of their secret properties are quite different. In the case of tarshish, Bacci follows the Vulgate and translates it as chrisolito. The divergence between de’ Pomi and Bacci is not surprising. The identification of this stone was a troublesome matter for sixteenth-century Italians: Sante Pagnini, Marco Marini, Andrea Bacci, David de’ Pomi, and Abraham Portaleone all came to different conclusions regarding its proper identity. Some natural philosophers, such as Abraham Yagel, even proposed two translations for the Hebrew term.¹³⁴ This multiplicity of opinions regarding the stones’ true identity, especially in Jewish communities, led Augustinus Steuchus to muse in his Veteris testamenti recognitio of 1529 that Jews were “more casual than all other people in contriving knowledge of these matters.”¹³⁵ Bacci’s entry on chrisolito, for example, is short and says little about the medicinal properties of the stone. After listing possible alternative names for the stone, he notes, in step with de’ Pomi, that the best version of the stone comes from Ethiopia, while lesser versions originate in Arabia. At the very end of the entry, he observes that the stones “guard against evil spells most effectively when they are worn on the left arm.”¹³⁶ Apart from this mention of the health benefits of chrisolito, Bacci says nothing else about the stone’s ability to protect people from the plague.

Bacci analyzes the more quotidian health benefits of other stones in the high priest’s breastplate. In fact, precious stones had a secure place in Galenic medicine as remedies for a variety of afflictions.¹³⁷ Bacci notes, for example, that topatio (Hebrew: pitdah) is effective against “sadness and other afflictions of the soul” and that it “mitigates against anger and fury.”¹³⁸Smeraldo, similarly, when “worn around the neck, cures the Hemitritean fever, the worst sort.”¹³⁹ He is also interested in etymologies, clearly specious to the modern reader,¹⁴⁰ and in Jewish commentators’ views of certain stones – even if only to dispute them. For example, discussing sapphiro, Bacci remarks “although some Jewish interpreters describe it as being of similar color to crystal, and others to purpura nigra, which is the color of violets, these commentators are mistaken; it is common knowledge that sapphire is the color of the air in the clearest sky.”¹⁴¹

The ultimate difference between these two natural philosophers is that while de’ Pomi focuses on the scientific and curative properties of stones, Bacci is concerned above all with the spiritual significance and doctrinal relevance of the stones’ identity. Labeling himself a “Christian philosopher” in his work on unicorns, Bacci’s allegiance was to the dominant figures in Christian thought.¹⁴² Accordingly, when he assessed the significance of the names of biblical stones, Bacci faithfully follows Saint Jerome and Epiphanius, the fourth-century bishop of Cyprus who wrote an influential work on precious stones in Revelation. For example, regarding the diaspro, Bacci explains that it is mentioned in Exodus “in order to prefigure the heavenly Jerusalem in the Apocalypse with the fundamentals and marvels of the diaspro, since the strength of the diaspro and the grandeur of the science of God overpower and overcome all false doctrine.”¹⁴³ For de’ Pomi, the ultimate strength of biblical stones lay in their curative powers, not their theological ones. Bacci shared a belief with de’ Pomi that attending to the natural products of the biblical world could positively change present-day circumstances.

As were the church fathers Jerome and Epiphanius, to whom Bacci paid eloquent deference, Bacci was chiefly concerned with the symbolic features of the high priest’s stones. In fact, the Roman botanist undertook his work because those theologians deemed the precious stones worthy of investigation.¹⁴⁴ As such, it is not surprising that Bacci’s identifications of the stones match those of the Vulgate precisely; taking his lead from Epiphanius, he had no reason to deviate from church tradition. In spite of Bacci’s and de’ Pomi’s many similar tendencies and overlapping professional interests, their different means of employment affected their approach toward the scientific content of scripture. Bacci lived in Rome and, in addition to his teaching responsibilities at La Sapienza, was working as the chief physician to Pope Sixtus V when he published his book on precious stones. His personal circumstances led him to follow the fathers of the church and refrain from speculation on the medical and magical applications of biblical products. Still, to understand the role patristic writings played in Italian naturalists’ efforts to understand the precious stones of the Bible, we must consider the availability of those writings in de’ Pomi’s and Bacci’s time, as well as their significance.

Bacci was not alone in introducing his work as a continuation of patristic writings; many other Italian naturalists grounded their investigations of science and scripture in a discussion of one or more fathers of the church.¹⁴⁵ De’ Pomi may have turned to their writings as well. We know that learned Jews in sixteenth-century Italy such as Azariah de’ Rossi read patristic writings, especially in the new Latin translations of Greek patristic works coming out in the sixteenth century.¹⁴⁶ And Christian scholars also directed an increasing amount of attention to the church fathers as the century wore on.¹⁴⁷

Neither Epiphanius nor Jerome, the two church fathers Bacci openly acknowledges as direct influences, identifies tarshish as hyacinth or describes the medical benefits of that stone. Epiphanius, in his short work on the precious stones of the Bible, which was available in several editions by the middle of the sixteenth century,¹⁴⁸ was concerned above all else with describing their appearance and predicting their efficacy in aiding “pious meditations.”¹⁴⁹ Because Epiphanius focused his attention on the spiritual properties of the stones, and because his renderings of their names remained in the mainstream of Catholic tradition owing to their identical match with the language of the Vulgate, Epiphanius was a trusted source for scholars like Bacci.

Jerome, a slightly younger contemporary of Epiphanius, had not defined tarshish as hyacinth but praised it as a “most precious stone” and speculated that it might be a variant of ligurius, the stone he designates as leshem. In a letter on the priest’s garments, Jerome wondered why hyacinth, “a most precious stone, is not included among them, unless perhaps it is another name for ligurius.”¹⁵⁰ And, in general, Jerome displayed very little interest in the medical properties of stones. As they were for Epiphanius, homiletics were his primary interest. Jerome did mention Symmachus, the late second-century translator of the Bible into Greek, and he was aware of gaps between Symmachus’s rendering of the names of the stones and his own. He noted, for example, that Symmachus did not translate bareqet as smaragdus but prefers ceraunius.¹⁵¹ In another place, Jerome directly took up the issue of whether tarshish is best understood as chrysolithus or hyacinth and suggested that the very word tarshish expressed the blueness of the sea. According to Jerome, the stone took its name from this color.¹⁵² The fact that he did so is evidence that, from late antiquity to the sixteenth century, the proper identification of this stone was a matter of controversy.

But without question the church father who took the most sustained interest in hyacinth was Symmachus, of whom sixteenth-century scholars were well aware. Symmachus rendered the Hebrew term tarshish as hyakinthos in virtually all instances for which we have record of his work. Symmachus’s Greek translation of the Bible dates from the late second century. Scholars have long debated Symmachus’s translations as well as his religious identity. Eusebius and Jerome believed that he was an Ebionite, or Jewish heretic. Epiphanius maintained that he was a Samaritan who converted to Judaism.¹⁵³ In the nineteenth century, Abraham Geiger concluded that certain Midrashic renderings in Symmachus’s translations proved his status as an Ebionite.¹⁵⁴ Most modern scholars have agreed.¹⁵⁵

Whatever his religious identity, Symmachus was the only ancient translator of the Bible into Greek who rendered tarshish as hyakinthos.¹⁵⁶Even in biblical passages where tarshish is employed as an adjective rather than as a noun, Symmachus renders it as some variant of hyacinth.¹⁵⁷ Scholars as varied as Augustinus Steuchus, the exegete, and Antonio Carafa, the primary editor of the Sixtine Greek Bible, knew of Symmachus’s Bible translation and occasionally accepted his interpretation. The Jewish convert to Christianity Sixtus Senensis wrote an entry on Symmachus in his Bibliotheca Sancta.¹⁵⁸ Although I have not yet found any printed text from de’ Pomi’s lifetime that notes Symmachus’s translation of tarshish as hyakinthos, we do know of manuscripts that contain Symmachus’s glosses. Natalio Fernandez Marcos has reported that between 1565 and 1575 the library of a certain Konstantinos Barenos contained a complete translation of the Psalms by Symmachus and other bits of the Old Testament.¹⁵⁹ And Steuchus and Carafa are merely two examples of de’ Pomi’s contemporaries who were aware of Symmachus’s work. Ulisse Aldrovandi approvingly quotes one of Symmachus’s glosses, and even prefers one of Symmachus’s renderings of a precious stone in Ezekiel to that of Jerome.¹⁶⁰ Aldrovandi’s patron Gabriele Paleotti mentions Symmachus as well in a badly damaged letter in Bologna’s Archivio Isolani.¹⁶¹ Augustinus Steuchus observed that the “true septuagint was most holy among the Jews ... but it did not satisfy Symmachus or Theodotion, who established other interpretations.”¹⁶² Steuchus knew that Symmachus’s renderings of the Hebrew Bible presented an alternative to the Septuagint. He also stated that he had access to various Greek Bible commentaries in the library of the Venetian cardinal Domenico Grimani: “Greek fathers, who were most vigilant in matters of sacred scripture, are commonly cited, for we have a great number [of them] in the divine library of the most learned man, the most excellent in all virtues, Domenico Grimani.”¹⁶³ While it cannot be proved that de’ Pomi himself had access to Grimani’s collection – de’ Pomi was a small child when Grimani died, and parts of his collection were dispersed soon after his death¹⁶⁴ – we know from Moritz Steinschneider’s research that Grimani had cordial relations with Jews and even hired Abraham de Balmes as his Hebrew teacher. De Balmes dedicated a 1523 Latin composition to Grimani.¹⁶⁵ Finally, we know that de’ Pomi’s Jewish compatriot Azariah de’ Rossi was familiar with Symmachus’s works – even if only at secondhand. In his Meor Enayim (Light of the eyes), de’ Rossi wrote that “the books which were translated by the seventy elders did not retain their true meaning in the Greek language. And so Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion made other translations which were different from it.” In contrast to Aquila and Theodotion, de’ Rossi suggested, Symmachus “gave more consideration to the meaning of the text.”¹⁶⁶

And there is one final way de’ Pomi might have come across Symmachus’s rendering. A corpus of eleventh-century Greek glosses to the sixth-century Codex Ambrosianus testifies to the persistence of Symmachus’s translations throughout the Middle Ages. In these texts, a Jewish glossator broke from the standard rendering of tarshish as chrysolithus and translated the Hebrew stone as hyakinthos.¹⁶⁷ As de’ Pomi sought to import a corpus of scientific knowledge into the camp of scriptural studies, Symmachus’s translations may have provided a valued link.

Though de’ Pomi roamed far and wide to find information about the stones of the high priest’s breastplate, there were sources within his own cultural tradition that may have inspired him as much as Albertus Magnus or Girolamo Cardano did to wear the diacinto stone as a prophylactic against the plague. A Talmudic legend in the tractate Bava Batra relates that “a precious stone hung from the neck of Abraham, our father. Whoever looked upon it was instantly cured.”¹⁶⁸ Although de’ Pomi nowhere mentions this passage, early modern Jews, in spite of the ban against printing the Talmud in Italy after 1554, knew it well.¹⁶⁹ De’ Pomi, as an educated Jew, was almost certainly aware of this passage. It attests to a belief, enshrined in one of Judaism’s canonical texts, in the curative properties of precious stones. De’ Pomi may have drawn from the Talmud to buttress his belief, buoyed by scientific learning, in the curative properties of stones. Though it may have legitimized his own practice of hanging a stone around his neck, the Talmudic legend about Abraham did not specify what stone it was.¹⁷⁰ As we have seen, de’ Pomi had to look far beyond classical Jewish traditions and medieval Hebrew lexicography to equate hyacinth with tarshish and augment his faith in the latter with the science of the former. De’ Pomi and his Jewish colleagues such as Abraham Portaleone balanced contemporary learning with received tradition. Such a commitment was a constant challenge, a stimulus to further study, and an exercise that strengthened their faith.

Conclusion

For David de’ Pomi, Greek traditions and empirical evidence connected premodern science to scripture, allowing him to import a body of scientific knowledge into scriptural studies. While he professed his allegiance to medieval Hebrew lexicography, he supplemented that tradition with other sources. For his work on the precious stones of the Bible, at least, de’ Pomi favored medieval and early modern Latin lapidaries as well as a corpus of medieval Hebrew writings on precious stones. Oral traditions may have informed de’ Pomi’s views, too. Venice was crowded with Jews from all over the Mediterranean world, and as writers in both the sixteenth and twentieth centuries emphasized, rendering the names of biblical stones into the vernacular was a common practice – and one that each community performed differently.

De’ Pomi’s sensitivity to and interest in Greek terminology for the Bible’s recondite vocabulary is representative of broader trends in Italian Jewish culture of the late Renaissance.¹⁷¹ Joanna Weinberg has clearly shown how important the Septuagint was in Jewish culture in the middle of the sixteenth century and has argued that Azariah de’ Rossi was familiar with the Greek Bible in spite of the fact that he did not know Greek very well.¹⁷² Abraham Portaleone and his teacher Moses Provenzali used Italianized Greek words to gloss scripture.¹⁷³ The physician and antiquarian Girolamo Mercuriale invoked a line from Horace when he urged students to study Greek “day and night” in his popular work on medical studies.¹⁷⁴ His language may have reminded biblically literate Jews of similar wording in a scriptural exhortation to study day and night.¹⁷⁵

In sixteenth-century Italy the examination of precious stones from the Bible was an intellectual endeavor that stood at the intersection of medicine, antiquarianism, and biblical studies. For de’ Pomi, and for other Italian physicians as well, medical science and biblical studies had a reciprocal relationship. De’ Pomi’s scientific training helped him understand scripture by introducing him to Latin books and traditions that, properly understood, could reveal the Bible’s hidden meaning. And his education at Perugia instilled a lifelong interest in Greek that stimulated de’ Pomi’s curiosity about Greek renderings of the Bible as indicative of the text’s true meaning. But de’ Pomi’s fascination with biblical gemstones was not merely bookish; it was nurtured by the commercial setting he lived in. His professional experience as a physician put him into regular contact with several Venetian merchants who dealt in precious stones. In de’ Pomi’s mind, some of those stones, including hyacinthus, became physical instantiations of biblical words. However, university education and medical culture did not merely offer their services to biblical commentary; they were enriched by biblical traditions, too. De’ Pomi believed that a biblical product whose arcane properties were exposed by modern science could be the best cure for disease. And in a time of devastating plagues such as the one that struck Venice in 1571–2, medical practitioners of all sorts enthusiastically sought new remedies. When Andrea Bacci invoked the “science of God” and its “grandeur” in his discussion of the high priest’s stones, he articulated a belief that the natural philosophy of the biblical world could solve contemporary problems. He easily could have been speaking for his Jewish colleague from Spoleto.