MANETTI, GIANNOZZO°

MANETTI, GIANNOZZO° (1396–1459), Hebraist and humanist. Manetti acquired a wide knowledge of Hebrew language and literature and was even taught to speak Hebrew by a Jewish teacher (later baptized) who lived with him. Manetti took lessons also from a Florentine Jew named Immanuel (probably the loan-banker Manuelo of San Miniato), giving him instruction in philosophy in exchange. Many of the Hebrew manuscripts in the Vatican library were originally in Manetti's possession. He made a Latin translation of the Psalms, which he defended against its critics in a five-volume work. In 1447 Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini organized a religious disputation at his court between Manetti and Jewish scholars. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: U. Cassuto, Ebrei a Firenze nell' età del Rinascimento (1918), 275–7; C. Roth, Jews in the Renaissance (1959), 103, 139–40, index; Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite di uomini illustri, ed. by L. Frati, 2 (1893), 33–200 (abbr. Eng. tr. by W.G. and E. Waters, Vespasiano Memoirs (1926), 372–95); W. Zorn, Gianożzo Manetti, seine Stellung in der Renaissance (Endingen, 1939). (Umberto (Moses David) Cassuto)