AQUILINO, RAFFAELE:

By: Richard Gottheil, Giuseppe Jare

Italian apostate who renounced his religion in 1545—eight years before the public burning of the Talmud in Rome (1553)—and who was one of those that denounced Hebrew books, as Steinschneider deduces from a dedicatory passage in Aquilino's "Trattato Pio." The historian Joseph ha-Kohen, in his "Emeḳ haBaka" (transl. Wiener, p. 89), says that there were three of these apostates: Ananel di Foligno, Joseph Moro, and Solomon Romano. Joseph Moro was called Filippo, and Solomon Romano took the name of Giovanni Battista Romano Eliano. It may be conjectured that Aquilino was identical with the most wicked of the three, Ananel di Foligno. There has been ascribed to Aquilino a work (referred to above) entitled "Trattato Pio, nel quale si contengono Cinque Articoli pertinenti alla Fede Christiana, contro l'Hebraica Ostinazione, estratti dalle Sacrosante Antiche Scritture." This was twice printed at Pesaro—in 1571 and in 1581.

Aquilino seems also to have written a second anti-Jewish work, called "Magen David" (MS. Urbin. No. 1138 in the Vatican Library), which some have supposed to be identical with the book of Angelo Gabriele Anguisciola, entitled "Della Hebraica Medaglia detta Maghen David et Abraham," Pesaro, 1621. By a decree of the Roman Catholic Church, dated March 16, 1621, this book was placed in the Index. Steinschneider doubts the identity of the two works.

G. G. J.