Messer Leon settled as a rabbi at Ancona at about this time, and established a yeshiva, or academy, where he combined the traditional study of the Jewish texts with lectures on the non-Jewish program of the medieval secular curriculum.
He remained there, with his academy, for virtually the whole of the rest of his life, until he and his son David were forced to flee in 1495, the year after the death of King Ferdinand, to escape the violent pogroms that ensued following the capture of the city by the French under Charles VIII.
Messer Leon wrote extensively, including commentaries on the Organon, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Physics of Aristotle, and their analysis by Averroes, in which he followed the Scholastic style and methods, composing for his students "summaries (sefeqot) on the Scholastic quaestiones (i.e. points of apparent textual contradiction) debated by the Italian academic community",[1] drawing closely on the style and substance of expositions then current at Padua.
More generally circulated were three textbooks addressing the three foundation subjects of a Renaissance secular education, the trivium ("three ways") of grammar, logic and rhetoric, seen as the essential prerequisite disciplines necessary for higher studies in the humanities, philosophy, and medicine.
The author desired to demonstrate to the non-Jewish world that the Jews were not devoid of the literary sense, and he wished to prove to his co-religionists that Judaism is not hostile to secular studies, which contribute to a better appreciation of Jewish literature.
Azariah dei Rossi quoted Leon as a witness to the value of secular studies,[3] and Joseph Solomon Delmedigo recommended the book to the Karaite Zeraḥ bar Natan of Trakai.
Following on from his father, Messer Leon's son also became a noted rabbi, physician and author, and defender of the value of the secular disciplines of the Renaissance to Jewish philosophy culture and study.