GUIDACERIO, AGACIO°

GUIDACERIO, AGACIO° (Agathius Guidacerius; 1477–1540), Italian Hebraist. A priest from Calabria, Guidacerio began studying Hebrew at Rome under Jacob Gabbai, who was apparently a Portuguese refugee. Under the patronage of Pope Leo X, Guidacerio served as first professor of Hebrew at the University of Rome from 1514 onward. He published a pioneering Grammatica hebraicae linguae (Rome, c. 1514) and an annotated edition of Song of Songs (Rome, 1524; Paris, 1531). During the sack of Rome (1527), Guidacerio lost his library and subsequently fled to Avignon, from where he was called to Paris to become a royal reader at the College of the Three Languages. His other works include another Hebrew grammar, Peculium Agathii-Mikneh Agathii (Paris, 1537), and Sefer   ha-Diqduq – Grammaticae in sanctam Christi linguam institutiones (Paris, 1539). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Galliner, in: HJ, 2 (1940), 85–101; C. Roth, Jews in the Renaissance (1959), 145. (Godfrey Edmond Silverman)