Jerónimo de Santa Fe ( fl. 1400–1430; born Yehosúa ben Yosef) was a Spanish

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and religious writer who, after conversion to

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

from

Judaism Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in t ...

, wrote in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

as Hieronymus de Sancta Fide (Jerome of the Holy Faith). Born Yehosúa ben Yosef, his epiphet "al-Lorquí", from Lorca, near

Murcia Murcia (, , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, and the seventh largest city in the country. It has a population of 460,349 inhabitants in 2021 (about one ...

, may indicate his place of birth or later residence. An alternative hypothesis places his hometown as

Alcañiz Alcañiz () is a town and municipality of Teruel province in the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. The town is located on the banks of the river Guadalope. Alcañiz is the unofficial capital of the Lower Aragon historical region. It lies ...

. According to

Richard Gottheil Richard James Horatio Gottheil (13 October 1862 – 22 May 1936) was an English American Semitic scholar, Zionist, and founding father of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity. Biography He was born in Manchester, England, but moved to the United States a ...

(1911) it is not correct to identify him with the author of the same name who wrote an anti-Christian letter to Solomon ha-Levi (

Paul de Burgos Paul of Burgos (Burgos, 1351 – 29 August 1435) was a Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity, and became an archbishop, Lord Chancellor, and exegete. He is known also as Pablo de Santa Maria, Paul de Santa Maria, and Paulus episcop ...

). The only proof offered for such an identification is a note appended to the manuscript of the letter to the effect that "the author afterward became a Christian". This note, not in another manuscript ("Cat. Leyden", pp. 276, 354), was probably added by a later copyist who was misled by the similarity of the names (see Joshua ben Joseph ibn Vives al-Lorqui). Joshua ha-Lorki was baptized before Vicente Ferrer delivered his proselytizing sermons in Lorca. Although not a

rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...

, as Spanish chroniclers claim, he was well versed in the

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

and in rabbinical literature. In order to show his zeal for the new faith he tried to win over to Christianity his former co-believers, and to throw suspicion on them and on their religion. For that reason he was called "megaddef" ("the blasphemer"), from the initial letters of his name, Maestro Geronimo de Santa Fé. He offered to prove from the Talmud that the

Messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of '' mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach ...

had already come in the person of Jesus. For this purpose he induced

Antipope Benedict XIII Pedro Martínez de Luna y Pérez de Gotor (25 November 1328 – 23 May 1423), known as in Spanish and Pope Luna in English, was an Aragonese nobleman who, as Benedict XIII, is considered an antipope (see Western Schism) by the Catholic Church ...

, whose physician he was, to arrange the

Disputation of Tortosa The Disputation of Tortosa was one of the famous ordered disputations between Christians and Jews of the Middle Ages, held in the years 1413–1414 in the city of Tortosa, Catalonia, Crown of Aragon (part of modern-day Spain). According to the ' ...

with learned Jews. Either before or after the debate Hieronymus, at the request of Pope Benedict XIII, wrote two articles in which he heaped up accusations against the Jews and repeated old, apparently slanderous charges. One of these articles was ''Tractatus Contra Perfidiam Judæorum''; the other, ''De Judæis Erroribus ex Talmuth''; they were published together as ''Hebræomastix'' (Zurich, 1552; Frankfurt am Main, 1602; Hamburg, n. d.), printed in the ''Bibliotheca Magna Veterum Patrum'', Lyons, vol. xxvi., and Cologne, 1618; they were also translated into Spanish under the title ''Azote de los Hebreos''. Articles in response were written by Don Vidal Benveniste, with the title "Ḳodesh ha-Ḳodashim", and by

Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus was a French Jewish philosopher and controversialist. He lived at Arles, perhaps at Avignon also, and in other places, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He belonged to the well-known Nathan family, which claime ...

in his "Tokaḥat Mat'eh". Hieronymus had several sons. One of them, Pedro, was in special favor with Queen Maria. Another was assessor for the governor of Aragon and lived in

Saragossa Zaragoza, also known in English as Saragossa,''Encyclopædia Britannica'"Zaragoza (conventional Saragossa)" is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributar ...

; this son of the "apostle of Tortosa", as De los Rios calls him ("Hist." iii. 264), took part in the assassination of

Pedro de Arbués Pedro de Arbués, also known as ''Peter of Arbués'' (c. 1441 – 17 September 1485) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a professed Augustinian canon. He served as an official of the Spanish Inquisition until he was assassinated in the La ...

, was arrested with other Marranos, and, in order to escape the disgrace of being publicly burned, killed himself in prison. His body was burned publicly on October 21–22, 1486. Other members of the Santa Fe family were burned as marranos in 1497 and 1499.

Works

* "De iudaicis erroribus ex Talmut"El tratado "De iudaicis erroribus ex Talmut" Jerónimo (de Santa Fe), Moisés Orfali Levi

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fe, Geronimo de Santa Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism Spanish Roman Catholics Spanish male writers 15th-century Castilian Jews 15th-century Spanish physicians Medieval Jewish physicians of Spain Murcian writers Conversos Critics of Judaism Date of death unknown Year of birth unknown Medieval Spanish physicians Antisemitism in Spain Christian anti-Judaism in the Middle Ages Christian antisemitism in the Middle Ages Spanish conspiracy theorists de:Josua ben Josef Lorki es:Jerónimo de Santa Fe he:יהושע הלורקי