Isaac Cardoso

Born Fernando to a converso family in the village of Trancoso in Beira Alta, Portugal, Isaac Cardoso studied philosophy and practiced medicine in royal courts at Valladolid and Madrid. By 1648, he was living in Venice as a practicing Jew. From 1653, Isaac was a physician in the ghetto of Verona. His Philosophia libera (Free Wisdom, 1673) reflects his Iberian education. Later, following the rise of Sabbateanism—aided by his brother Abraham’s writings—which Isaac opposed, he denounced the study of non-Jewish science and philosophy, and published Las Excelencias de los hebreos (The Excellences of the Hebrews, 1679), an apologetic defense of Jews and Jewish theology.