Origini siciliane e fasti romani di Ferdinando Balami, archiatra pontificio, poeta e traduttore della prima metà del secolo XVI

Abstract

The career of Ferdinando Balami, which took place in the shadow of papal power in Renaissance Rome, was unquestionably extraordinary. He was the son of Sicilian Jews, or Jewish converts, who had emigrated to the Urbe following the exile of 1492-93. Balami practised medicine and managed to scale the heights of his profession in the eternal city and the earnings he accumulated enabled him to have a luxurious palace in the centre of Rome, designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Balami knew and frequented the academia and the banquets: he, too, composed and exchanged verses of poetry, and, thanks to his established position at the papal court, he managed to exploit this network of friendships cultivated by means of his role as physician and pontifical archiater, maintaining relationships with the greatest cultural and political exponents of the time, united by a shared philo-Medici project. Over the course of his life in Rome, Balami showed himself to be a humanist physician who, following the centuries-old tradition of the Jews of Sicily, made his knowledge of languages and ability to translate of texts into instruments of power and social success. His role as a translator of Galen’s texts from Greek into Latin undoubtedly transported him into the intellectual avant-garde of the time and earned him a place in posterity with his successors and critics. Furthermore, in Rome between the 15 th and 16 th centuries, one begins to see a certain number of “Sicilians”, either Jews or new Christians, who formed a rete mirabile (“remarkable network”) that had access to the Urbe thanks to the relationships of patronage with eminent families who maintained interests in and ties to the island.