Thursday, February 3, 2011


JEWS AND MAGIC...

CIAO, TUTTI!
Jews and Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto Blanis is coming off the press – now as we speak – after many years and many adventures.
It all began with a breathtaking discovery in the Medici Granducal Archive. I found a cache of two hundred letters from Benedetto Blanis (a Jew in the Florentine Ghetto) to his great patron Don Giovanni dei Medici (the illegitimate son of  Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany). This is the largest  body of surviving correspondence from any Jew in early modern Europe.