ALFONSO OF ZAMORA

ALFONSO OF ZAMORA (c. 1474–1544), Spanish scholar. He was the son of Juan de Zamora, apparently one of the exiles of 1492 who subsequently returned to Spain, father and son being baptized together in 1506. Alfonso, who had received an adequate Jewish education before baptism, became professor of Hebrew at Salamanca, one of the European universities where Hebrew studies had been established by a decree of the Council of Vienna in 1311–12. He published in Latin an introduction to Hebrew grammar, dictionaries, and contributions to Bible study as well as a conversionist letter to the Jews of Rome (Alcalá de Henares, 1526). Alfonso is mainly remembered for his participation in the pioneering Complutensian Polyglot edition of the Bible, in the preparation of which he worked for some 15 years. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: F. Perez Castro, El manuscrito apologetico de Alfonso Zamora (1950); Sefarad, Index Volume (1957), S.V. Zamora. (Cecil Roth)