Felix Pratensis (Felice da Prato) (died 1539 in Rome) was an Italian

Sephardic Jewish Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

scholar who converted to the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. He is known for his collaboration with the Flemish printer

Daniel Bomberg Daniel Bomberg ( – ) was one of the most important early printers of Hebrew books. A Christian Hebraist who employed rabbis, scholars and apostates in his Venice publishing house, Bomberg printed the first Mikraot Gdolot (Rabbinic Bible) and ...

on the first printed

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

''Biblia Rabbinica''From 1906

Jewish Encyclopedia ''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the ...

(''Veneta'') of 1517/8. He received an education and acquired three languages. In 1518, he converted to Christianity. Having become an Augustinian Order, Augustinian friar, he devoted himself to proselytizing, especially to Jews. Before his conversion, Felix published a Latin translation of the

Psalms The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament. The book is an anthology of B ...

entitled ''Psalterium ex Hebræo ad Verbum Translatum'', Venice, 1515.

References

*Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. i. 918, iii. 935; *

Moritz Steinschneider Moritz Steinschneider (; 30 March 1816 – 24 January 1907) was a Moravian bibliographer and Orientalist, and an important figure in Jewish studies and Jewish history. He is credited as having invented the term ''antisemitism.'' Education Mo ...

, Cat. Bodl. col. 2111 * and Paul Rieger, ''Geschichte der Juden in Rom'', ii. 37

Notes

External links

* * * {{Authority control 1539 deaths 16th-century Italian Roman Catholic priests Augustinian friars Italian biblical scholars Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism Italian Sephardi Jews Jewish scholars 16th-century Italian Jews Year of birth unknown