# Elijah Montalto

> Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Elijah_Montalto
> Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Elijah_Montalto.md
> Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Montalto
> Source revision: 1350590991
> License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Portuguese-French Jewish physician (1567-1616)

*Optica intra philosophiae*, 1606

**Elijah Montalto** (1567 – 1616) was a [Marrano](/source/Marrano) physician and polemicist from Paris[1] who became the personal physician of [Maria de Medici](/source/Maria_de_Medici).[2]

He had been reared as a Christian in Portugal and openly returned to Judaism on settling in Venice. His *Suitable and Incontrovertible Propositions* was an [anti-Christian polemic](/source/Anti-Christian_sentiment).[3][4] He was one of the teachers of [Joseph Solomon Delmedigo](/source/Joseph_Solomon_Delmedigo).[5]

When Montalto died, [Saul Levi Morteira](/source/Saul_Levi_Morteira) went to Paris to recover his body for burial in [Beth Haim of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel](/source/Beth_Haim_of_Ouderkerk_aan_de_Amstel), one of the [Jewish cemeteries in Amsterdam](/source/Jewish_community_of_Amsterdam#Jewish_Cemeteries).

## Works

- [*Optica intra philosophiae, et medicinae aream, de visu, de visus organo, et obiecto theoriam accurate complectens*](https://gutenberg.beic.it/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=153313) (in Latin). Firenze: Cosimo Giunta. 1606.

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Garrabé J and Berrios G E (2015) Montalto Philoteus Elianus (1557–1616) *Annales Médico-Psychologiques* 173 : 892–899.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** Michael Heyd *Be sober and reasonable: the critique of enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries* Leiden: E. J. Brill 1995 Page 58 "In 1611 he returned to France to become a court physician to Marie de Medicis. For a recent interesting discussion of Montalto, which is focused, however, on his anti-Christian polemics, see Bernard Cooperman, "Eliahu Montalto's .

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Bernard Cooperman, "Eliahu Montalto's Suitable and Incontrovertible Propositions: A. Seventeenth-Century Anti-Christian Polemic," in *Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth-Century* Isadore Twersky Bernard Septimus, eds., [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [9780674474659](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780674474659) Harvard University Press 1987 Harvard Judaic Texts and Studies

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** Ralph Melnick *From polemics to apologetics: Jewish-Christian rapprochement in 17th Century Amsterdam* Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981 "Our portrait of Montalto is that of a former Marrano, returned to his ancestral faith, living as a learned Jew in the medieval Sephardic tradition"

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** *Yoseph Shlomo Delmedigo, Yashar of Candia: his life, works and times* Page 45 [Isaac Barzilay](/source/Isaac_Barzilay) - 1974 "Besides Galileo, Yashar also mentions among his teachers Elijah Montalto (d. 1616), the famous Jewish physician, who at the end of the sixteenth century left Portugal and after short stays at the royal court of France, Livorno, Florence and Pisa, finally settled in Venice, where he openly returned to Judaism and ..

## External links

- Media related to [Elijah Montalto](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Elijah_Montalto) at Wikimedia Commons

Authority control databases International ISNI 2 VIAF GND FAST WorldCat National United States France BnF data Italy Portugal Netherlands Israel Other IdRef

---
Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Elijah Montalto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Montalto) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Montalto?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.