Abstract
Moses Maimonides is probably the most important, certainly the most influential, Jewish philosopher of all times. Both his philosophical and juridical works became fundamental references of the Jewish culture already in his lifetime, but they also underwent several sharp critiques. During the Renaissance, his philosophical masterpiece, The Guide for the Perplexed, was either read according to the platonic orientation of the time or criticized as the main expression of an extreme rationalistic attitude; in both cases, it was universally admired and quoted. This is true also for the representatives of the so-called Jewish Averroism during the Renaissance; in fact, these authors were Maimonidean-Averroists.
The prestige of Maimonides was great among Christian scholars, too. His philosophy inspired some important Christian cabalists, and the Guide was translated into Latin and considered a work important for religious thought in general, which was exceptional, in a period of widespread rebuttal of the Jewish postbiblical doctrines, seen as false and vane. The Mishneh Torah, the main juridical work by Maimonides, was also partially translated into Latin, when the curiosity for Jewish laws and rites grew in the Christian world.
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Guetta, A. (2015). Maimonideanism in the Renaissance. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_161-1
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