A Jew at the Medici Court. The Letters of Benedetto Blanis Hebreo, 1615-1621

In the companion volume to his Jews and Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto Blanis, Goldberg makes available to specialist researchers the remarkable series of 219 letters written by the protagonist Benedetto Blanis to his patron, Don Giovanni dei Medici, an illegitimate son of Duke Cosimo.These letters, which constituted the primary evidence for much of Goldberg's earlier volume, are the only known continuous series of letters by an early modern Jew.As such, they are a unique source of information on the relationships between Jewish clients and Christian patrons, on the provisioning of the Medici prince's household, and, most importantly, on the strange and contradictory roles both Benedetto and his Medici patron played in their relationship with each other and other Florentines.The letters loosely narrate Benedetto's activities and travails in Florence between 1615 and 1621, when Don Giovanni de' Medici was posted in Venice and Benedetto took to writing assiduously to ensure his continued favour.They trace his downfall under the Medici regime, which grew increasingly suspicious of his connections to occult philosophies and other mysterious sources of knowledge.Unfortunately, the letters here constitute only one half of a two-way correspondence.Don Giovanni dei Medici's letters are not extant, as they were confiscated from Benedetto's keeping in a raid on his ghetto home by Florentine police.Benedetto's letters to his patron survived, according to Goldberg, by an accident of history when they were overlooked in a postmortem purge of Don Giovanni's Venetian estates (xii).Benedetto's lively and personal writing style is a joy to read, and Goldberg's skilful editing of difficult Tuscan dialect make it accessible to specialists in Italian history and literature.Benedetto's story is a strange one, and the light it casts on Jewish-Christian relations in Florence reveals a great deal of intellectual and philosophical exchange between the Jew and his Medici patron.Although many of Benedetto's letters are formulated like petitions, explaining the tribulations he suffered in his business and familial relations, many others refer specifically (or nebulously, sometimes) to the books, manuals and other items of curiosity that Benedetto located and obtained for Don Giovanni, presumably on his requests.These books and other items, Goldberg argues in Jews and Magic in Medici Florence, reveal a practice in which Benedetto acted as a middleman between occult producers and the Medici prince.The reproduction of the letters themselves in a skillful manner makes this thesis testable by other interested scholars while opening the door to their use in other avenues of research.The book is well-edited, with a brief but informative 8-page explanatory

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