Elia del Medigo

But, according to other scholars, Delmedigo was clearly a strong follower of Averroes' doctrines, even the more radical ones: unity of intellect, eternity of the world, autonomy of reason from the boundaries of revealed religion.

By 1480, he was in Venice, where he wrote Quaestio utrum mundus sit effectus, and supported himself by giving classes in Aristotelian philosophy attended by the sons of wealthy and important families.

Grimani proved to be a consistent patron, and with his encouragement, del Medigo wrote several manuscripts which received wide distribution among Italian philosophers.

In the end, however, Del Medigo was no Kabbalist, and he became disenchanted with the syncretic direction Pico and his colleagues were moving in, a tendency to combine concepts of magic, Hermeticism and Kabbalah with Plato and Neoplatonism.

During this period, del Medigo returned to Jewish thought, writing the Sefer Bechinat Ha-dath for his students, in which he clarified his disagreement with the magical and Kabbalistic theories that inspired Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man, and expounded his belief that a human being cannot aspire to become a god, and that Judaism requires that a man must "fight for rationality, sobriety and the realization of [his] human limitations.