Jewish Preaching and the Language of Science: The Sermons of Azariah Figo

The age in which the preachers of the Italian ghettos delivered their sermons was also the great age of scientific discovery in Europe. Far removed both geographically and culturally from the cramped but ornate synagogues of Venice, Ferrara, or Mantua, Galileo peered through his famous telescope, Vesalius performed his revolutionary anatomical experiments, and Bacon and Descartes reflected deeply on the new methods of fathoming the natural world from their own distinctive perspectives. Beyond the walls ostensibly separating Jews from the social and cultural life of their Christian contemporaries, a revolution was taking place in astronomy, in physics, and in the life sciences. This revolution was accompanied by a thorough diffusion of scientific knowledge accelerated through printed books; by a dramatic re-evaluation of what constitutes knowledge and the authority it commands in European culture, and by a radical transformation in the ways human beings view the cosmos and their place within it.